Wednesday, 25 November 2015
Charleston, SC
It's a beautiful bright morning and we are all ready to start some sight-seeing, except poor Will who has decided to nurse his cold in bed, so that he can join us all for dinner tonight.
Our caravan of two cars leaves the hotel and heads north on Route 17--the same road that runs through Fredericksburg, VA--across the modern cable-stayed Ravenal Bridge that crosses the Cooper River at its almost-widest point. It is a beautiful modern sculpture whose two towers soar over all of the very low-built city. The original Cooper River bridge was an ungainly steel cantilever structure that rose and dipped like a roller coaster as its two narrow lanes crossed the river. A second, twin bridge (without as many dips and rises, however), was built to accomodate the increase of road traffice in the 1960s. But the passages between the posts of the bridge were not wide or deep enough for today's modern tankers, so both bridges were torn down and replaced by the new one. Charleston's harbor is one of the busiest on the East Coast and it was starting to lose businnes to other ports that could accommodate these large ships. Ultimately it's quite an aesthetic improvement as well.
Our destination this morning is Boone Hall Plantation, about 25 miles north of Charleston. Although the main house was built in the 1930s, it was constructed in large part with materials from the earlier wood, stone, and brick houses on the same site. Bricks were quite plentiful, because as long as there was slave labor brick-making and cotton planting were the primary operations on the plantation. After a brief tour of the downstairs of the house (the current owner still occupies the upstairs), we enjoy a motorized cart ride through a large portion of the plantation that is currently growing a large variety of crops, from strawberries to peaches to pecans.
 |
| Akiko and Steve at Boone Hall Plantation |
 |
| Boone Hall Plantation House |
 |
| Boone Hall Plantation: Entrance Avenue of Live Oaks and Spanish Moss |
 |
| Boone Hall Plantation Srawberry Crop |
The grounds of the plantation are maintained at the highest quality so that although camellias are about the only colorful plants in bloom, the shrubbery and grassses are quite attractive. From here it's a short ride to the resort community of Mt Pleasant--not very high but directly on the water, for a seafood lunch at Water's Edge restaurant. The parking lot is overflowing with cars and we think we will have a long wait for lunch, but the restaurant itself has very few diners. The reason for the anomaly is that Marco Rubio is holding a political rally on the patio outside our window. He looks younger and more comfortable in person than on television, but his ideas are not any more palatable even when heard inside a restaurant.
 |
| Marco Rubio in Mt Pleasant, SC |
 |
| Akiko, Art and Steve at Charles-Towne Landing |
 |
| Charles-Towne Landing |
 |
| Charles-Towne Landing |
 |
| Charles-Towne Landing |
After lunch we head back over the Cooper River Bridge. Les and Judy return to the city to do more sightseeing, but Steve, Akiko, and I head to the suburbs to the home of my cousin Art, who is probably my last living relative here in Charleston. We spend a delightful afternoon with him, visiting Charles-Towne Landing State Park, the site of the first settlement of the colony in the 16th century. On the way back to town we stop at the cemetery to visit with a host of my relatives who now permanently reside in peace.
More about tonight's dinner at High Cotton, and Thanksgiving Day lunch/dinner at Magnolia in the next entry.
__03.jpg)