well. this post isn’t exactly chronological. between our two weekends in savannah, i took the kids to fort sumter, where the first shots of the civil war were fired, just south of charleston. it was actually more of an undertaking than i was prepared for and we were pretty disappointed.
like fort jefferson, this fort is on a tiny island in the middle of some water, and an expensive ferry trip is the only way to get there. so, we bought our tickets. and then stood in line. for. like. ever. the ferry concessionaire also operates the patriots point naval museum and our view while waiting was the USS yorktown, a pretty massive shipped parked in the harbor(?). we didn’t have time for that, and navy ship tours aren’t met with enthusiasm by lidkids.
we scored a table for the ride over. nice and cozy. and dry. remember this info.
upon our arrival, we filed off the boat with the masses and made our way to a ranger handing out junior ranger books, which would’ve been nice to have had on the boat, but alas they did not have them at the museum. and since we only had an hour to explore and finish the book, if we wanted to get our badge there, it was going to be tight.
signage. 
view from the top. 
america. 
wandering amongst the ruins. 
in the museum. always fans of a good scale model. 
drawing the palmetto flag for their books. 
another photo shoot. 
and another. 
cannon in nested archways. :). 
we thought peeking out this little hole to see the iconic ravenel bridge was cool. 
soaking in the last minutes before boarding the boat.
since we waited until the last minute to board the boat, we were left without a seat on the ride back, so we sat on the floor and ended up soaking wet by the time we were done. so lovely.
some other thoughts. it wasn’t enough time. actually that’s probably my only thought. we wanted to get some souvenirs at the nps gift shop, but the line was too long and we didn’t want to waste 10-15 minutes of our hour to buy pencils and stickers. i think a little national park kiosk in the museum area would be awesome. for junior ranger stuff. and questions. and souvenirs, so i’m not stuck buying the dumb gift shop crap.
and. as you probably surmised, the kids didn’t finish their badge. we spent the ferry ride back looking up things on my phone, so we could drive over to the nearby fort moultrie and get their badges.
since we were already at fort moultrie, we decided to see if we could knock out the junior ranger books before it closed in an hour. i don’t have many pics, because we were on a mission. but fort moultrie is interesting because it was used throughout many different wars and has a lot of different technologies to check out and is sort of sprawling along the waterfront.
we finished just in time and rolled in to get a second junior ranger badge for the day, and our third in a week. i think all the civil war stuff is sort of confusing for the kids, but they hung in there and hopefully retained a thing or two….