ON THE BEACH

We're looking a little differently at our three-and-a-half miles of beach after visiting with marine geologist Dr Leslie Sautter, from the College of Charleston. During a pre-walk presentation at the Oyster Catcher Community Center and, later, walking along North Beach with Dr Sautter, we came to appreciate how the beaches of the Seabrook/Kiawah formation dynamically change and re-shape themselves from year-to-year, and the importance of remodeling the cut at Cap'n Sam's Spit once a decade to maintain the ecological integrity of such an important habitat for migrating birds like the red knots that will be arriving soon on their annual northward migration. And those black streaks we always notice in the sand? It's titanium, an abundant metal widespread in the Earth's crust, commonly found dispersed in sand, and noted for its resistance to corrosion from elements like seawater.

AROUND WRAGGBOROUGH

Charleston's Wraggborough neighborhood, bounded by King Street to the west and E. Bay Street to the east, was the destination for a walking tour of one of the city's busiest and most historic districts. Named for Joseph Wragg, an early 18th-century slave trader who once owned the entire parcel, the district's seven main streets are named after Joseph's children - Ann, Charlotte, Elizabeth, Henrietta, John, Judith and Mary.

During our tour, we visited the grounds of the Joseph Manigault house, with its lovely gardens anddistinctive red-roofed rotunda - which, we learned, once housed restrooms for a gas station that occupied part of the site. Across the street is the Museum of Charleston, one of the country's oldest municipal museums, which manages the Manigault house.

Nearby, at the intersection of Meeting and Calhoun streets, is the former home of The Citadel, now an Embassy Suites hotel whose lobby gives a nod to the former occupant with reproductions of the two crenellated towers of The Citadel's logo. We finished our walk at the campus of the College of Charleston, with its stately live oaks along the walkways. Founded in 1770, the college is the nation's oldest educational institution south of Virginia. So much history packed into just one section of the city!

ON THE PENINSULA

Downtown Charleston's rich history has been drawing us to the Peninsula this month. One walking tour on our SINHG Trip schedule visited sites connected to the devastating 1886 earthquake that struck the Lowcountry on August 31st of that year, and which remains the largest recorded earthquake to ever hit the southeastern coastline of the United States, taking the lives of over 100 Charlestonians. It's estimated that it was at least a magnitude 7 quake, whose tremors were felt as far away as Maine and which caused damage, in today's dollars, of some $150 million.

One of our downtown culinary tours catered to the chocolate lovers among us when we visited the historic State Street dining room for an evening of "Death by Chocolate", a narrated five-course meal during which, while we consumed delicious chocolate-based entrees and desserts, we listened to stories of Charleston's dark and ghostly history,

from the ghosts of the victims of the city's 1854 yellow fever epidemic to a notorious serial killer. Thrills and a sugar rush, all in one package!