Day 2: Charleston

Magnolia Plantation House

So, I've really been slacking on the blogging as we have now arrived in our third city and I haven't written a blog since the evening we arrived in Charleston.  Anyway, our day in Charleston started out bright and early with a breakfast.  Then we were off to the Magnolia Plantation.  Driving down the road to the plantation was beautiful with the spanish moss.  We decided to do the house tour which was just okay not all that great.  Also do the nature train which took us around the planation, saw many birds, alligators and duck weed (not pond scum).  Also found out spanish moss is not really moss, like Lis mentioned earlier.

 The general admission included tours of the garden and animal areas, which is one of the areas I enjoyed the most, white tailed deer, turkeys and bird just roaming around.   We also did a swamp walk which required entering this gated boardwalk area over the swamp.  The gate reminded us of Jurassic Park.  Saw turtles sunning, heard but did not see a bull frog, saw tons of nesting bird, egrets and what I think were cormorants, very noisy. Not sure it was really worth the money we paid but still beautiful to see and learned more about the history of Charleston.

After our swamp adventure we rushed to catch the ferry to Fort Sumter, after a small miscommunication between me and Karen, our trusty GPS, we made it there with about 15 minutes to spare.  After a 30 minute ferry ride we listened to Ranger Nick give what was to be a 15 minute talk about the history of the fort, it turned into more like a 20 to 25 minute talk, we then walked around checking out the fort and headed back to the ferry.  

Once back in on the waterfront in Charleston we were in search of food.  I had done some research and knew about this place called Coast Bar and Grill.  The food was wonderful.  Had this coleslaw with bacon and blue cheese, oh so yummy, and crab cakes.  After dinner we walked down the street and got gelato.  Also oh so yummy, called Bacio, tasted just like Nutella, but frozen.  We sat in a near by park and watched these two guys attempt to tight rope walk.  Incredibly entertaining, we do have video proof and the mocking that occurred.  After dinner we headed back to the hotel were we went for a swim, of course me being me, I dropped my watch and knocked loose some of the number dashes so now the watch is not working and it sucks.  Not sure how Fossil will feel about be sending back the same watch again after them only fixing it a few months ago for the same problem, but that time it was not the result of dropping.  Hopefully I will be able to catch up with the blogging before we leave Atlanta,  up next will be the adventure to Savannah with the detour through "Jurassic Park" aka Hunter Island State Park.