South Carolina business trip

I got sent to Columbia, South Carolina for a business trip the whole week in early March. Since I haven't been to that part of the country I figured I'd stay a few more days and look around. The business trip was pretty busy too, just work the whole week. Man, restaurant food portion is so large, this is why American are getting more and more FAT. I had steak, lamb, ribs, oh man......

First day off - Saturday. Checked out and went to Lake Pontchartrain. Nice large lake. Then went to see the Capitol building. This is on their main street, downtown is pretty small.


Here is the famous Confederate flag. There was a big hoopla in 2001 when they finally took it down from the top of the capital building and put it on this flag pole next to the statue.




Here is main street, pretty small. The University of South Carolina is close by here as well.



After that I drove 100 miles to Charleston. Checked in at the hotel in North Charleston and went to downtown. There are quite a few more black people here than Portland. This is the Civil War Submarine - H.L. Hunley. It's the first submarine in history to sink an enemy ship, but didn't escape. It was sunk and was never found. This is a replica.

Had a Gyro lunch at a greek restaurant then went to the historical part of town. These houses look awesome, probably very expensive. This one has very nice front porches.


Day 2 - Drove to the Charleston Tea Plantation - the only tea plantation in North America. Their tea is similar to Lipton, but actually a lot better. It was fun to visit, but the $5 plantation tour wasn't really worthed. It was just driving around the tea plants. The free factory tour was good though. It sounded like they were in trouble financially and the partnered with Bigelow and now are doing pretty well. Good decision to drop by.

After that, I went to the original Charleston Landing. These settlers came from Barbados a little later than the other East coast settlements. This is a pretty cool museum/park. The $5 fee was cheap although I didn't pay. Somehow I went through and nobody asked. 8)
This is the original landing point. The river is pretty boggy and they landed here because they were afraid of Spanish attacks. Once they got more established they moved the whole town to present day Charleston which is has a better port, but is more exposed to attacks.
This is the site of the original town. There are a lot of digs in the area to uncover building sites because they still don't know where all the people lived. They only found two buildings with in the fence so far.

This is a replica of a settler's house.

The stockade. They put people here if anyone break the law. Public humiliation, we should bring this back.
Canons.
Alligator lounging around.

That's all folks.

Hobi: before and after pictures

Hobi before



Hobi after 9 months at the Udompanyanan ranch.






















Just kidding, she is not that big. Here is the real Hobi. She has filled out a bit, but is still quite petite.



The 20 pounders there is Hercules. He was in the news for getting stuck in a doggie door when he went to steal cat chow. 8)
He's cute, don't you think? Anyway, he was reunited with his owner and had a happy ending.

The new Tram

We got free tickets to ride the new Tram during their grand opening a few weeks ago. It was a great sunny day in Portland. We met up with Dave and Sheryl, then took the ride up to OHSU. It was a very quick ride, very nice. There was a swing when we passed the tower, but everyone had fun. The tram cost was 59 million dollars, much more than the projected 15M. That was due to many things such as material cost went up and the upper terminal is anchored to a building so it needs advance supports. It will cost $4 to ride up and down once it opens for business, but if you have a monthly or annual bus pass, it will be free. I think it's will be a great tourist attraction, you get great view from the hill.

This is the lower terminal.

One tram goes up while the other down. Their name are Walt and Jean, kind of boring. Walt was the first black graduate from U of O and Jean was the first female grad. in Civil Engineering from OSU.




Click for larger picture. You can see Mt. Hood in the background. The lower terminal is part of the new South Waterfront neighborhood. The towers are condo, very expensive. A 2 bedroom, 1300 sq. ft. condo cost from 550k to 700k.



This neighborhood will be nice once they finish building, maybe in 5-10 years. It is right next to the river and has great view of downtown and Mt. Hood. It is always windy and every time we drop by though. **sour grape**
Anyway, I think downtown is better. It's closer to more activities and is not as expensive.