South Carolina--Day 5

September 22, 2011

Our first item on the agenda for this day was to go to Drayton Hall.  I enjoyed touring this plantation because it is pretty much all original.  The paint, the ceilings, the floors have all been maintained to their original state these past several hundred years.  You may notice that there is no furniture in this house.  Why?  Because it is considered a distraction for tourists.  By not having any furniture in the home you are able to fully appreciate the originality of the entire house (I know I did).

Are you familiar with these?  They are called growth sticks (picture courtesy of Google images).

Well the Drayton family decided to keep track of the growth of their children.  The tradition has continued for these past several hundred years and I believe that the current descendants still practice this today.  If you look closely in this picture you will see several pen marks on this wall.  How cool is that?

During our tour of the grounds at Drayton Hall I was busy taking pictures when I suddenly realized that my ankles felt like they were on fire.  Perplexed, I looked down at my feet and saw that I had stepped into a fire ant hill!  It was awful!  I walked away with several ant stings but I would have probably received more if I was wearing my flip flops.  Thank goodness I wore my tennis shoes that day.

After Drayton Hall we all headed back to downtown Charleston for lunch at Petticoats.  Here we met up with my Dad as his convention meetings had ended.  I don't know why, but we didn't take any pictures at lunch.  Oh well.

After lunch we went to visit historic Fort Sumter.  Again, South Carolina is very proud of its history and they are particularly proud with their Civil War history.  That is because the first shots fired in the Civil war took place at Fort Sumter.

Fort Sumter is located in the Charleston Harbor and in order to set foot on the fort you have to take a boat--which I loved because you got to see Charleston from the ocean.  It was so beautiful and the sea air was so refreshing.

 

During our boat ride we had a few visitors come and join us.  If you look closely you'll see that these are dolphins in these pictures--not sharks.  They were so much fun to watch.  I just wish I got better shots of them.  Trying to predict when and where a dolphin would come to the surface was quite hard.  I am pretty proud of these few shots though.

Here are a few shots inside the fort.

It's time for a little compare and contrast again.

This photo was taken in 1993.

And here we are 18 years later.  Yes I know--Mary is not in this photo and I realize that my dad was not in the 1993 photo either.  But it is so much fun to see how much we've changed in the last 18 years.

When we got done with Fort Sumter it was approaching dinner time and we were all getting hungry.  My Mom wanted to treat everybody to dinner that night so we headed over to Blossom Restaurant.  The food was so delicious and it was so much fun.  Thanks Mom for the treat!

After dinner we said a few farewells.  My Dad was leaving early the next morning to go back home, and Eric's family was staying in Charleston for another day.  Nathan and I, along with my Mom and my sisters, Emily and Katherine, were to leave the next morning to head north to Charlotte.  It was sad to say some goodbyes because it meant that our trip in South Carolina was really coming to a close.