Personal Narrative: My Trip To Charleston, South Carolina

My bags were completely packed for our upcoming trip to Charleston, South Carolina. I had been waiting for this seemingly perfect trip for the whole summer.

When we arrived at our cabin, it was less than what we expected; much less. The private cottage was extremely outdated. When we first walked in, you could hear my mother shriek after she spotted a cockroach near the fireplace. I couldn’t sleep from the constant feeling that bugs were crawling on me.

About halfway into the trip, my family and I were eating dinner at California Dreaming when we received a phone call from our neighbor informing us of a large storm that was present back home.

“It sounds like someone is ripping off my garage door,” our neighbor, Sharee Wagoner, explained. We continued eating without worry until Sharee called us a second time telling us that her next door neighbor’s trampoline was in her pool. The five of us all

Our neighborhood looked like a demolition site. There were trees, leaves, and branches scattered among the roads and driveways. We couldn’t even access our driveway due to a large tree in the way of our path. The entire property was a warzone. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. While circling the house, we spotted many old trees believed to be at least 100 years old that had fallen. There was a notable stench in the air. A musky scent up near the front of the house. I saw that our gas lamp had been crushed by a fallen branch and gas was leaking into the air. We’re lucky that there wasn’t a fire, or else our house would have been gone for sure. The tornado looked like it had just eaten up the trees surrounding our home. Since there was no visible damage to the house, my father and I went in to the powerless house to rest from the grueling five hour trip that we had just endured. The next morning, my father and I started clean up process and cleared the driveway of any fallen