The Anniversary Trip to Charleston

On May 23rd of this year, Steve and I hit our 15 year mark, and as our gift to each other, we farmed out the kids, packed up our bags and boarded a plane.  When Steve asked me where I wanted to go for our trip, I told him I wanted to go to a beach somewhere, and I wanted to see something I had never seen before.  After a little deliberation, we settled on Charleston, South Carolina.
Our first two days away were spent "de-toxing" on Folly Beach.  Like many of you, we don't get a lot of time to just sit and relax, so that is what we did.  And I didn't even have to make sure that none of my children were running away, or drowning in the ocean, or eating sand, or getting a sunburn.  Ahhh...

We did spend a little time playing in the ocean too.  We rented a couple of "Boogie" boards from a kid on the beach who handed them over and said (with a little laugh) "Tear it up".  I am sure we looked like two overgrown kids, but we had a blast, and laughed at ourselves really hard (by the way, the ocean doesn't taste very good).  Doesn't Steve look like a natural beach bum?

After our stint on the beach, we went into downtown Charleston and lived the life of tourists.  The first evening we were there we took a Carriage tour of the city. I was really impressed with Charleston and loved the history and the old homes all lined up in rows.  Here is a sample of a few...
   

Here is the steeple of St. Michaels Church (for Mom).  I kept my eyes open for this one in particular because of a book I was reading.

Now that I have been to Charleston, I am trying to figure out how to add a Piazza onto my house.  All the houses have these doorways on the side of their homes that lead into an open outdoor sitting area (the piazza) and then into the home.  This was one of my favorite things.

The next day we took a ferryboat out to Fort Sumter.  On the way out we sailed around the USS Yorktown, a retired aircraft carrier.  That thing was huge (very technical term, I know)!


Once we arrived at Fort Sumter, the park ranger (a younger kid) gave a really interesting history of what happened there and it's significance to the start of the Civil War.  I was really impressed with him and his knowledge of the history of the time.  We only got about 40 minutes at the fort, and we could have spent more time there, it was pretty cool.
 


 
Are you getting bored yet?  Steve and I are definitely not as interesting as our kids.
That evening we went and visited a plantation, and while I was a little disappointed by the house (it wasn't the original plantation house, it was built in 1920) I fell in love with the trees!  Boone Hall Plantation is well known for it's entrance, the Avenue of the Oaks and was well worth the visit just for that alone.   It was incredible, the picture doesn't come near to doing it justice...

These Live Oak trees were phenomenal, this one is over 500 years old...


Not a great picture, but I loved this tree.  I could just imagine this being the hideout for some little kid when he didn't want to do his chores...
 
And here is the back view of the actual house, it was beautiful, just not what I was hoping for :)...
 
We did see a house the next day, right in downtown Charleston, called the Edmonton-Alston house.  It is situated right on the ocean front and is beautiful!  It dates back to the 1800's, and better satisfied my historical craving.  You can't see it well in this picture, but it is just to the left of the big pink house...

It also had a beautiful piazza, on all three levels, overlooking the ocean  (Sigh)...
 
Well there is a little taste of Charleston.  We had a fabulous time, and are so grateful to good friends who made it possible to get away!  We figure after 15 more years it shouldn't be quite so hard to get away! :)