Weekend Fun in South Carolina

Saturday we decided to do some sightseeing as long we had the opportunity to be in South Carolina. There are several plantations in the area and Magnolia Plantation was recommended as one of the better ones to visit.

These massive Live Oak trees are numerous on the plantation. Many of them are more than 500 years old and meant to withstand hurricane force winds and rains. The Spanish moss hangs freely from many of the trees and plants. It's not really moss, but a flowering plant that lives on the air and particles in the air. The trees have a very spooky feeling to them.


This is the home on the plantation and has been turned into a museum. The present owners still live on the plantation in another home, as well as some of their relatives in other homes.

We went on a boat tour of the marsh area around the plantation and saw a lot of different kinds of grasses and birds. Most of us only wanted to see alligators, but only saw one, as they were smarter than we were and were hiding in the cool water. Actually, they are nocturnal so they aren't out and about much during the day anyway. It doesn't appear that way on TV!

We took another tour of the plantation grounds on a train. We saw more wildlife. These wild turkeys took their time strolling down the road and refused to move until they found a clearing in the woods that appealed to them.

This is one of the original slave homes. The 2 doors meant the home was shared by two families with a fireplace in the center for both families to use. Each had one window in the side of the home. They are restoring four of these homes for some big celebration next year.

Several of these guys are walking around the plantation grounds and we took pictures of them while....

we ate lunch. We shared a sandwich and had "big" diet cokes----the humidity really gets to you! Drinking is about all you care about.

Yeah!!! I finally spotted an alligator!!! They say if you measure--or in our case---estimated the distance from the eye to the end of the nose in inches and then change that to feet, it will give you a good idea how big the gator is. Ray figured he was a pretty good sized guy--9 to 10 feet. He came pretty close to the edge, so we left! Apparently, they don't eat much--the problem is--you never know when they are hungry!!!!!!!!!!

We drove toward the coastline to Patriot's Point and this is a picture of the US New Yorker. Too rainy and not enough time to go on the tour. We drove from here to Sullivan's Island to see For Sumter, but is was too rainy and foggy to see it. Then we crossed another bridge to Isle of Palms island and then . . .

HOME IN THE RAIN !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

On Sunday we went to church at the Cornfield Ward and then home for some dinner. The forecast was for unpleasant weather, rain, wind, hail, etc., so we decided to take a nice long Sunday afternoon drive to Columbia, SC to see the temple. We did encounter heavy rains and were slowed to a creep several times. We were surprised how much traffic there was a on Sunday.

This is the way our Sunday afternoon drive started and the freeway was lined with trees like this almost all the way to Columbia.


Then the rain came and we began to wonder if we were going to have to swim back to the hotel.






The granite had a lot of gray veins, giving the outside the look of a much older building.



The grounds had beautiful flowers, bushes and trees as we have all come to love about all the temples we get to visit.

Lynn, this picture is for you. You need to gather MORE rocks and make the base of each of your trees look like this.

Flowers everywhere. The grounds were beautiful. When we returned home, we encountered similar weather conditions. But, we made it safe and sound!