June 15th

Where do I start. A

full day that required a 4 pm nap for us both!

We got up early for us and headed into Charleston to visit the Magnolia plantation. 1679 it started. They tried to grow many things, cotton, sugar, silk...nothing grew in this swamp. The daughter and son in law tried rice and had success. The rice paddys were dug by hand by the enslaved workers. Today they are shallow ponds, huge and have trees etc that have fallen into them. This is ba k to the regular evo cycle. We were both surprised to hear that gree film we all see on top of these bodies of water tell us the water below is very clean. That green film grows the world's smallest flowers. Microscopic white flowers.

We saw at least 8 alligators. Some are hidden In the pictures, one is lounging on an alligator platform. They built them because they would be playing chicken with them on the tour tram road. They like to sun themselves. The picture does not show he was right in line to jump on a bird that dives in the water for a fish! We saw hundreds of eggret, turtles, ducks, wild turkeys, hawk, mini horses and donkeys. Stable full of horses, sheep on the lawn, one dead armadillo! Tits up all 4 pointing to the sky!

The nature trail was nice, we rode the tram. Great info and tour. Lots of blooming flowers and beautiful plants. We were both surprised by the natural look that has been returned to the property. They still had the enslaved workers cabins and gardens on the property. The mansion as they called it was beautiful, however we both expected more grandeur. We did not walk all the gardens and paths. But did enjoy our tour and our drive.

The road leading to the plantation was a 2 lane narrow country road, covered in a tree canopy. Dave said wow 55 for a speed limit, it should be 35. It was full of business for the first few miles, then became a hilly twisty road. No slowing for pictures or you'd get fun over.

We drove through the front grounds of a second plantation Middleton Place. That house and grounds did not disappoint. They even had sheep on the huge front lawn grazing (mowing)!

They had horse carriage tours, we just did our own car tour through the roads we could access. Very beautiful.

After researching both online we hardly saw anything! The Magnolia still has rice paddys they operate. Google maps tells all the dirty secrets!

From there we drove in to Charleston. We had planned to do the horse carriage, but after yesterday and this morning we decided no more hard seats and back ache for Dave. He had researched the routes and the historical houses we wanted to see. He drove us right up and down the streets with all the huge wonderful old homes. We did our own dang tour! We both love the old houses and we were like kids, look at that one, look at the porch, the railing, the stairs ....you get the picture. Literally we took so many pictures. Guess we will bore you with them when you visit us.

We both really liked Charleston and would come back. It's very different than Savannah. We went to Poogins Porch for lunch. It had been recommended and the reviews were good. The highlight of lunch was we got a parking space and Dave got to hang out with golden doodles. We had a wait and were finally seated. The She Crab soup was amazing. Dave had fried chicken it was good. I had chicken sandwich it was good. One piece of chicken not cooked, then used my credit card and someone decided to use it for travel in France 45 min later. Thank goodness for alerts on my phone with charges. Card cancelled, new one on the way!

So it was an ok lunch.

We headed through Mt Pleasant and over to Sullivan Island. We saw the aircraft carrier York Town. It was in the battle of Midway. Took heavy action, almost sunk but was restored near the end of WWII. On to Ft Sumter first shots of the Civil war were fired there. It is a national monument. Right near the beach.

We drove through beautiful beach houses, are you seeing a pattern here???Think we both like them. Can't afford them but we do like to dream. Ps no beach house for us!! We will visit but we like the desert 🏜️.

The rivers were full of boats, small, medium and large. And some giant..we saw cargo ships in Port. Lots of fishing and pleasure boats and some pretty nice yachts. Tons of cars parked anywhere they could to walk to the beach.

We headed home on the freeway. We have become a pretty good team of driver and navigator. We got back on base to the camper. Dave was sound asleep in 5 minutes. Took me a bit longer but I soon l

joined him. Salami sandwich and coconut cream pie for dinner. Just might be time for a round of cards after I get the dishes done!

Happy Father's Day to you Father's.

I miss my dad Bill every day. Blessed to have a bonus dad who really was a dad.

Happy Father's Day to Dave. Proud father of three lovely kids And three kids in law!