Another Day of Caching in Charleston 1/16/2008

We left the RV about 9:00 this morning to head for Charleston and another day of great caches. We had a few caches as objectives today as they were puzzle caches and usually take some time to do. The first one was Longest Family Owned Plantation in SC, Archdale Hall Plantation, and was the ruins of the Baker families house located in N. Charleston. We figured out the puzzle all except for 1 coord but were able to find the cache by process of elimination. There really wasn't much left of the house to see. All that was still there was a few low brick walls and many other piles of crumpled bricks. The land grant from King Charles ll in 1683 was to Richard Baker who named the plantation after his mother who immigrated from Barbados. There were eventually over the years 6 owners named Richard Baker. In 1850 Archdale Hall consisted of 50 acres of improved land and 1400 acres of unimproved land and was appraised at $3,000.00 and the equipment was valued at $100.00. They had cows, sheep, swine and mules and raised Indian corn, peas, beans, sweet potatoes,rice and wool. On August31, 1886 Dr. Richard Baker was alone at the plantation ill in bed when the great earthquake took place. Late in the night the entire south wall and 3 corners of the house fell out. Dr. Baker was able to get out of the house between shocks and sat through the night on the front lawn. As he sat there, there was a strong odor of sulphur in the air and as he sat there he heard strange sounds and saw the shadows of those long departed pass before him round their home now falling to its ruin. In 1996 Archdale Histroical Association received the 2 acre site from C&S Bank and it was made into a historical site.
Next we traveled to The Citadel for a webcam cache which is a site where you stand in front of a webcam, which here was mounted on top of one of the dorms, and use your laptop to get on the internet. You then go to the webcam site and adjust the camera online to show yourself and you take a picture and then post it on the cache page. We suceeded in doing this all the time while the cadets were going to and from classes. After finishing the cache we looked around the college and saw many interesting buildings and statues.
Then it was on into Charleston and another complicated puzzle cache. It was called Charleston Under Seige and had to do with the game Battleship where you had to find 3 PT boats on a grid of 25 squares. The way you found the ships was by visiting all the 25 squares on the board, each square containing coordinates and a true or false statement. Each square had you visiting a historical building where you might have to read a plaque, or a old house where you might have to identify some part of the structure, an old church or an old movie theater. After arriving at the coords and finding the exact location you looked at the statement and if the statement was true it was a hit and if it was false it was a miss. You had to keep visiting sites till you found all 3 PT boats. We visited 17 of the 25 sites and finally found all the boats, then figured out the coords by numbering the boats, but they were wrong as we found out last night we had our PT boats numbered wrong. It took us approximately 3 1/2 hours to visit the 17 sites we went to. We think we have it right now and are going into Charleston today to find the final cache location.
Then it was on to the Charleston Aquarium and a virtual cache which had to do with an award Charleston received. The award was the Carolopolis Award and was given to sites that maintained the integrity and materials of a historic site. The award was set into a sewer manhole cover in the sidewalk and was quite unusual to have it in this location.
The picture description is as follows: Top to Bottom: 1 & 2 Koa we are staying in now, 3-the webcam picture of Mom and myself taken at The Citadel, 4 & 5-KOA, 6 and the 1 picture on the left The Citadel, 7-9 Archdale Hall Plantation ruins. Hope you like them.
After leaving the downtown area we headed back toward the campgrounds and found 5 more caches located in local neighborhoods, a boat launch, one in a local park that was huge and very lovely and the last cache was in front of a restaurant/bar in an enclosed pen inside a dog house, which was very unusual. Then it was on back to the RV and we ordered Chinese out as it started to rain and rained most of the night. Well time to say goodbye for now and we love all you guys.