[9/4/12] Charleston.

Please excuse the multitudinous amount of pictures in this post. Since this is also my attempt at scrapbooking and journaling, I didn't want to miss anything.

Anyways.

John and I went to Charleston for a getaway before the BYUI kids left for school. We had an awesome time!

Day 1:  We left home a little bit before 7 a.m. and took a backroads way, missing the wonderful Atlanta traffic. It really was a pretty drive. We drove through many really small towns, which always makes me ask the question, "If these people aren't farmers, where do they work?" Because there seriously wasn't anything in these towns, except maybe a small store and/or gas station. And the little towns were not close together or close to a bigger town. 

When we got to Charleston, we checked into our hotel. We cashed in some Hilton points and stayed at a new Homes2 Suites (Hilton's new line of hotels), which was very European-like. Well, at least what appears to be European-like to me, even though I've never been to Europe. Yet.

Next we headed to downtown Charleston and first went to Market Street, where we bought some pralines (good, but not as good as the Savannah pralines), and then we wandered around looking at all the pretty buildings and churches. Many are pre-Civil War, which is pretty cool.  We went into two adjoining art galleries on Gallery Row which are run by a husband and wife artist team. We even met their dogs, Sully and Katie. Their artwork (the artists', not the dogs') was beautifully displayed, and they also had artwork from other artists. I found some watercolors that I fell in love with, and they sparked my desire to get back to painting. We were just about to head back to the car when John said, "I think I see water." Well, of course we had to go find it. We wound up at Waterfront Park, which was beautiful! And we could see the ocean. Felt like home. It was also across the street from a row of beautiful houses that I had seen depicted in some of the paintings in the galleries. I was so excited to find this spot! It was hot and humid (always an awesome combination), so we shared an Italian Ice and spent some time swinging on the swings on the pier.  

Pictures from Historic Downtown Charleston and Waterfront Park:

The praline. We had already eaten the chocolate one.

This squirrel was literally hanging on to the garbage can by his toenails.

General Beauregard's tomb

Cute little frog on Gallery Row

 

Love the texture on the wall

Some of the graves in this graveyard are from the 1700s

After we left downtown Charleston, we stopped at the Tanger Outlets by our hotel to try and find John some new dress shoes. Our hotel was in the perfect spot - close to lots of shopping, including Sams and Walmart and the Tanger Outlets, close to downtown, and close to pretty much anywere you'd like to eat. I wasn't in much of a shopping mood because I still have some "swelly belly" left from my surgery, so looking for new clothes just wasn't very appealing. But it was fun to walk around and look.

Tanger Outlets

Day 2:  This day was beach day! Woohoo! Before we went to the beach we stopped at Fort Moultrie, which was very interesting. It had been used from the Revolutionary War through World War II. Then we headed to the beach at Isle of Palms. It was a really nice beach, but the water was really cold. Much colder than the water when we were at Hilton Head in July. But even though I strongly dislike cold water, I was brave and slowly waded in until I got to where John was floating around. I know, if you just jump in you warm up really fast. But no, I'd rather pluck off my toenails. While we were floating, a pod of dolphins swam back and forth, jumping in the air, not too far from us. That was awesome! I tried to get pictures of them but wasn't really successful. It was fun to be at the beach together, and as fun as it is to be with the kids at the beach, it's also kind of nice to be kid-less at the beach. We could just float around and not worry about them drowning or getting caught in a riptide or entertaining them.

Some pictures of the huge bridge we drove over to get to the fort and the beach, the fort, and the beach:

You can see two of the dolphins (the little dark marks) in the water on the right hand side of the picture.

Some fellow beach goers gave some birds a piece of pizza. It was hilarious to watch pretty much every bird on the beach fly around and try to capture the pizza. A bird would get it, but couldn't eat it because as soon as he let go of it to try and eat it, another bird would swipe it away. It was pretty funny. And this picture doesn't even get close to showing how many birds were on the pizza hunt.

 

 

Day 3:  We drove over to the Boone Hall Plantation. This is one of the last plantations that is still a working plantation. We took a tour of the bottom floor of the plantation house (we couldn't see the upstairs because the family that owns the plantation still lives there part-time), and it was really interesting. There was a beautiful grand piano with very intricate wood carvings, tons of old books on the bookshelves, and even some furniture from the 1700s. We couldn't take pictures, so I don't have any to share. Then we took a trolley tour of the plantation and our driver was really funny and full of historical information. Then we walked around the slave quarters, which are the original slave quarters. One thing that a guide told us that I hadn't really thought about before is that once slavery was abolished, many of the slaves stayed with their owners because they had no money and no where to go. The owners would tell them, "I'll give you a place to live and food to eat, but you'll have to work for it," and so it was really hard for the former slaves to get ahead even though they were "free." 

The Avenue of the Oaks had 97 oak trees. It was beautiful!

Several movies and TV shows have been filmed at this plantation: the original North & South mini-series, parts of The Notebook, and parts of Army Wives.

Before our tour of the plantation house began, we walked in the gardens. Even though it was late in the blooming season, we still saw lots of pretty flowers. Many are just begging to be painted, as well as several of the pictures we took in downtown Charleston! Maybe after April 12, 2013 (which is the day I graduate from college. Yeah!)

This oak tree (the one with the dark trunk and limbs) is one of the oldest around. It sure has stretched out its limbs.

This is the original cotton gin building. The owners went in to put a restaurant in the top floor, but it started falling apart. They are in the process of restoring it.

This moss is called Redemption Moss. Our tour guide said that it only turns green when it rains and remains green for only a couple of days. (I'm sure there's a really good object lesson here). He said when it's not green you don't even notice it. I thought it was really pretty and I'm glad we got to see it.

The slave quarters

During this trip we often found baskets that were woven out of palmetto frongs and sweet grass. They were beautiful but really expensive. There was a lady in one of the slave huts that was making these baskets and it was really interesting to watch her for a few minutes.

This slave ship registry was really interesting and very sad. The picture below shows how many slaves were on the ship when the voyage began and how many survived the voyage.

Another view of the slave quarters. They were really small. One showed how the slaves used to bury things underneath the floor boards, and now what has been found has helped document slave life. Not many records exist about slave life.

One thing I kept thinking about during our trip was that I wished all the historic buildings and trees could talk. They've "lived" through so much history and it would be so fascinating to hear about this history.

After we were done at the plantation we headed home. It was really fun to get away for a few days and spend some time together. Luckily work was pretty quiet for John so he really got to relax, which he desperately needed. I'm so thankful he's game to do things that probably really don't interest him, but are really interesting to me. I love to go  to new places and learn all about that place - I'm kind of like a kid in a candy store that way. And he tags along and says he just likes to be with me. No matter what we're doing.

Yep. He's definitely awesome.