Last days in the South…

Our last few stops in South Carolina were in downtown Charleston. The first stop of the day was to be the Nathanial Russell House. Nathanial Russell was one of the most wealthy merchants in his day. Nathaniel’s house showed off his wealth by having a big circular staircase, round rooms with ornately carved moldings around the doors and crown molding. Unlike many of the houses in downtown Charleston Nathaniel’s house actually had a front yard and gardens to side of his house, usually the houses come right up to the sidewalk. Aaron and I loved the look of this house it was very beautiful inside.

We next visited the Powder Magazine of Charleston, a powder magazine is where the colonials stored all of their gun powder. To protect the gun powder the walls of the powder magazine were made to be 3 feet thick. Inside was an arched ceiling that came to a point, unexpected in a structure that was just meant to hold gun powder. We had fun playing with the different artifacts within the Powder Magazine.

While in Charleston we saw a lot of beautiful buildings, Aaron pointed out circular church that had a castle like feel to it. I loved this little yellow house right next to a cobblestone road. We traveled down a famous street in Charleston called Rainbow row that has a lot of different colored houses, and is said to be colored that way to bring in a Caribbean feel.

Aaron and I visited another house in Charleston called the Aiken House. It was one of the biggest houses in Charleston. The foundation that owned the house decided that they would only preserve the house rather than restore it. I always think it’s sad that some of these houses are never restored because they would be beautiful if they were. In Charleston they have these benches that were back then about the equivalent to a trampoline today, the Aiken house had one on their front porch.

We briefly stopped by a military college called The Citadel, kind of cool the buildings looked like castles and the floors were a red and white checker board.

We were sad to leave our little apartment near the ocean in South Carolina. We took some pictures of the big houses that were on our little island.

On our way out of South Carolina we stopped in Greeneville, South Carolina. We walked around downtown and stayed the night in a Hyatt hotel, Aaron and I thought it was one of the best hotels we have ever been in. Well thats all for the Southern States, so long and fair well.

Plantation Day

We love to go to the different plantations in the south, they all have such an interesting past and beautiful gardens. The gardens are always beautiful and green. The second plantation in South Carolina we were able to go to was Magnolia Gardens, it was Easter weekend so there was a lot of people there. We saw some more alligators and they had a lot of cute little bridges.

The Second plantation of the day was Drayton Hall, one of the most extravagant homes for the 1700’s. The foundation that owns the plantation decided that instead of restoring the house they would just maintain it an repair the house as needed. The house had numerous hand carved molding at the corners of the ceilings, even some of the ceilings were carved, it was amazing.

Plantation number three was Boone Hall another very pretty plantation not as old as most of the other plantations. One of the best features of the plantation was a long line of live oak trees lining the drive to the plantation house. Another interesting feature was the cabins that belonged to the slaves back in antebellum era.

Our very last stop of the day was to go to Folly Beach, it was a great day filled with beautiful sites all around.

More of the Low Country

Our new place near Charleston, had a beach two blocks away that is on Seabrook Island 30 minutes south of Charleston. We went for bike rides almost every day, on our many bike rides we stopped at the beach. It was slightly too cold to go for a swim in the ocean so we just walked along the beach. We had lots of fun riding our bikes and walking on the beach.

Our fist Saturday, we headed to Middleton Place one of the many plantations in South Carolina. It was owned by Arthur Middleton, one of the men that signed the Declaration of Independence. The gardens in Middleton Place were gorgeous. If anyone decides to go to South Carolina, definitely stop and look around Middleton Place. We even saw some alligators on the plantation, scary but cool.

After our visit to Middleton Place, we went to Patriots Point which has housed the aircraft carrier the USS Yorktown. We have never been on a Navy ship before, it was really neat to see what an actual carrier looks like. They had a recipe for cookies that made 10,000 chocolate chip cookies in one day, wow I would not want to be the one that got stuck making those haha.

At patriots point they also housed an old submarine, we thought the hallways and doors on the aircraft carrier was small in the submarine they were tiny. The living quarters were really small and the bunks were stacked right on top of one another.

To end the day we headed to Fort Moultrie, a very old fort that dates back to the revolutionary war. Not a whole lot to see there but it was really cool to see something that old. They had lots of powder magazines, they held all the gun power so you can imagine all precautions they took to protect those, one included building a 8 foot thick wall right in front of one of the powder magazines.