I was wonderfully entertained for several hours yesterday evening as at least three great horned owls vied for position over the campground.  High in the pines they hooted challenges to one another and glided right overhead as they traded perches as each appeared to be attempting to assert his superiority.

It is one of the grandiose marble columned historic state Houses with walls that bear battle scars from mortar shells and whose walls are lined with honorarium to soldiers as far back as the Indian wars.   It suffers some in need of maintenance but still stands as a symbol of a proud, determined people.

At first it was sporadic musket fire from behind the tree line.  We caught glimpses of red and blue uniforms.  Plain clothed militia men exchanged fire with the Hessian sharpshooters.  The British Colors emerged along with a row of soldiers and two cannon.    Half of the soldiers of South Carolina and Virginia Regimens emerged from the trees to our left to set up their cannons and flank the British.  The remaining Patriots fired on the British, retreated, fired, retreated, until they led them into the line of fire of the American cannons.  The cannons roared so loud I could feel it in my chest.  Smoke rolled and stung my nose.  The British Cavalry charged and retreated attempting to disrupt the American’s strategy.  Ultimately the British conceded defeat.  Weapons fell silent.  Pretty cool.  It was small I suppose compared to the full blown reenactments in places like Gettysburg but it is a great way to bring history alive.

We just happened upon a reenactment of the Revolutionary War battle of Camden.  British and American encampments were set up at the Camden Historical Park just outside of Columbia SC.  A couple hundred individuals were there in full period costumes reenacting lives of soldiers, their families, support personnel like the black smith and cooks/bakers.  Besides the battle, we got a glimpse into life in the encampments.   Open fire cooking, linsey-woolsey weaving, tools and utensils made from horn and iron.  There was a Sutlers row where I could have bought nearly anything needed to transport myself right into this world.   We crossed paths several times with an absolutely adorable little two year old running around in dress and bonnet with little wisps of curls peeking out from under her bonnet.  It was obvious that these folks really get into this stuff.

A grenadier demonstrated this really cool mini grenade launcher/mortar.  He fired a 2 ½” shell 75 yards or so.  This little puppy is what allowed the Grenadiers to move to a safer vocation.  They no longer needed to be the crazy guys who ran right up to fortifications and lofted grenades over the palisades.  With this nifty mortar they could wreck havoc from (relatively) afar.

There was a fife and drum demonstration.  Here’s a did you know: “drummed out of town” came from the military tradition that the drummers’ other duty is to mete out punishment among the army ranks including drumming the unsavory from the ranks.

The day ended with a cannon volley for each re-enactor that had died in the past year and a four cannon salute to the Bounty (the replica tallship that was sunk duringSandy) and her captain.  This is a tight knit group of more than slightly fanatical folks.

We sampled hearth baked bread and cookies and home made ice cream.  It was a fun afternoon.

Where do we begin?  As we make our first pass down the block aromas waft from some 40 kettles of simmering chili.  We are making our way through the 26^th Columbia SC 5-Points chili cook off where well known chefs and local wannabes compete.  I tried a non-traditional chicken bacon cheese version, a really hot ground beef and bean, a sweet/bell pepper beef tips version, and a pretty awful shrimp rendition. Kent experimented a bit as well.  The smoky brisket version he picked was unconventional but pretty good.  It was our first cook-off.  We just might try it again some time.

Top it off with some local Blues bands.  A street Blues Festival featured some pretty good bands.  Reggie Sullivan the Swamp Cabbage were the best one we heard.  It was not all what I could consider Blues but very listenable.  It was a fun way to spend a beautiful afternoon.   On yeah, there was festival food too.  It had been a long time since I have had a funnel cake.  Not bad.

It sounded like so much fun.  A marionette performance of Hansel and Gretel.  I couldn’t resist.   We were a bit skeptical as we drove up to the “theatre”.  It is a small building with a stage prop sort of paint job and a gravel lot.  When we bought the tickets the cashier said sit anywhere, except the front three rows, they are for kids only.  The acoustics of the theatre were pretty poor acoustics and we walked right into a birthday part for a two year old that included some 15 or 20 toddlers and their dotting “all about me” Moms.  Sounds like a “get me out of here” sort of moment doesn’t it?

Well, we decided to stay.  It turned out to be great fun.  The lobby was lined with fabulous puppets from other shows; Wizard of Oz, Snow White and the Dwarfs, Alice in Wonderland, and more.  We took our seats.  After only a few moments of wailing the kids settled in and we hardly knew they were there.

The narrator was a wonderful owl puppet and the characters were fairly simple marionettes but they were handled well.  Back projected scenery and creative shadow work made it just joyful to watch.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Out of the corner of my eye, I think I caught Kent smiling a time or two as well.

They are just trees, right?  Yea, but pretty amazing.  CongareeNational Park protects wonderful old growth, bottomland, hardwood forest that includes national Champion Loblolly pine, Water Hickory, and Swamp Tupelo trees.  I can’t help but stop and gaze to the sky when I get close to them.   There are many bald cypress too with their weird “knees” and flared trunks.

The damp rich soil provides a home for some really great jumping salamanders, a weird looking worm snake, deer, a bunch of different woodpeckers, and many fat happy grey squirrels.  They claim coyote and bobcat too but we didn’t see those guys.

Did you know?

The formula for identifying a champion tree is really pretty scientific.  The National Parks and State Parks apparently take this all pretty seriously and have agreed this is it.

Circumference in feet (at 4.5 feet above the ground)

+ Height (in feet)

+1/4 of the crown diameter in feet

= points and rating

No, we aren’t planning to make our next car a BMW.  We just needed a techy/engineering fix.  We toured the plant that builds their X3, X5 and X6 SUVs.  There were some cool advances since I have been through large scale manufacturing plants:

Material handling tow vehicles powered by onboard hydrogen fueled generators.  No more big battery recharging stations.  A computer tracks the torque guns.  It knows which bolt the operator is tightening, sets the torque, and keeps track so that the car won’t move on until they tighten them all.  All the electrical systems are tested remotely using wireless systems.  The guys on the line have nothing to do with it (except to be sure to be out of the way when the computer cycles the sun roof!).  BMW only builds made to order so options are delivered just in time to the workstation in the assembly plant synchronized to match up with the body with its RFID beacon on the hood as it moves through.  Fun.

Caesar’s Head and Table Rock State Parksin SC protect great rock outcroppings over 2000 feet high that mark the end of the mountain chain.  We have driven and hiked miles and miles along the ridges but until we wondered up here I hadn’t given much thought to the fact that they do indeed end somewhere.  Great bald escarpments stand huge among the pines with the Piedmont rolling on beyond their feet.  I remember a very similar realization when we looked up at the edge of the Colorado Plateau and the end of theRockieschain.  This is remarkable geology on a very grand scale.