Charleston for the weekend

Micky and I drove the rig to Charleston this weekend for a museum tour. They have about a dozen different museums on the peninsula and offer a special tour. Twenty dollars gets admission to nearly all of them.
We're parked in a jewel of a campground on James Island. This place has all the amenities of a commercial park at a very reasonable price. The park itself has a dog park, crabbing dock, miles of paved bike and walking trails along the Stono River and even Wi-Fi! And it is full! Glad we made reservations!
The trip down was uneventful except for the house batteries. Before we left I checked the water level and found the two golf-car batteries were dry. Filled them up and hoped for the best, but by the time we got here they were hot and stinking of sulfur dioxide! So hot that I had to pull out the battery tray and hose them down before I dared to handle them. Luckily, there's a Sam's club! Two new batteries installed. That led me to thinking about how they got fried. The charger/converter in the RV is an old ferro-resonant type charger. The batteries are constantly charged as long as the RV is plugged up. Since these old chargers are single-stage with no regulation at all, they boil the juice out if you don't stay on top of the batteries.
Consulted with Robert and decided that a different charger was the solution.
Guest builds the chargers in most of the newer high-end RV's. I researched the net and found a Guest 20 Amp two-bank unit on Ebay for $200.00. It'll arrive at the house next week and I'll remove the old one and install this one to handle both the house and the starter batteries. Problem solved.
We enjoyed most of the museums except for the Aiken-Rhett house which needs major renovation! The Confederate Museum is a one-room affair, but crammed with interesting artifacts. Micky and I were both moved emotionally by the exhibits in the Slave Market Museum. What got to me was the display of a small set of shackles designed to fit a child. I intellectually understand the economics that drove the institution of human slavery, but from our viewpoint of history I'll never grasp the mental detachment that it must have required. Especially repugnant is the complicity of the Christian churches and ministers in the subjugation of an entire race. Any one that can read the Epistles of Paul and their admonitions that slaves should serve their Christian masters especially well and still maintain ties with that philosophy is deluded.
Charleston is especially suited to people-watching. I was struck by the sheer number of cookie-cutter blondes on the streets. Literally dozens of pony-tailed Barbie dolls sometimes in clots of three and four together distinguished only by minor variations in the standard uniform of flip-flops, shorts, and baby-doll tops with sunglasses perched on top. Each one 120 pounds of fluff and nonsense. And I'm also tired of their male counterparts with sandals,shorts, and a tee-shirt furiously printed with vaguely rebellious wordings topped by a mop of curly ringlets. Really makes me pine for the genuinely outlandish fashions of the Sixties.
One of my best finds of the day was made by Micky. She spotted a sign on a cigar shop on Meeting Street touting "Legal Cuban" cigars. The Tinder Box has cigars made from pre-embargo Cuban tobacco. A cigar company in Clearwater, Florida imported 23 tons of cigar leaf in 1956,1958 and 1960. They went bankrupt after the embargo was in place and the tobacco was tied up in the courts until 1999.
I bought two over-priced cigars and enjoyed one tonight. Tobacco is best when well-aged and I guess 50 years ought to do it. The cigar was smooth and mild like the last Cuban I had, but the rolling was a bit off. An uneven packing by the roller means the cigar doesn't burn evenly with tight areas causing the ash to lack symmetry as it is smoked. But the taste was good and the smoke was mild.
We go back tomorrow to finish the tour, then drive home on Monday.