Time to Kill

Well, It's 9 AM here in beautiful Roanoke Rapids, NC and it's raining like hell. No need to hit the road for a couple of hours...so may as well do a little blogging.

Charleston was quite fun. On the drive in from Hilton Head we stopped at Magnolia Hall Plantation located in North Charleston on the Ashley River. The plantation house was torched by them damn Yankees at the end of the Civil War but was rebuilt in 1868 and further expanded in 1891. The house is cool; but the real reason for the visit is to see the magnificent gardens and surrounding swamp which both teem with exotic flora and fauna.

Although it was not prime blooming season (with the exception of camellia which were beautiful), the garden is still quite charming. We took both the trolley tour through the grounds and the boat tour through the swamp. Alison was all atwitter watching the birdies that included many species of wading birds, ducks, and tree dwellers. Dougie and I were fascinated by the gators - we saw several eight and nine footers.

We then motored into Charleston and checked-in at the French Quarter Inn - a wonderful boutique hotel in the historic district.

The next day we took a water taxi over to Patriots' Point where the WWII era carrier "Yorktown" is berthed along with several other historic warships. Doug and I enjoyed ourselves immensely. Alison probably not so much...

Yesterday morning we took a carriage tour of historic Charleston. The guide was very humorous. And we got a good sense of the development of the city over the past couple hundred years which can succinctly be described as haphazard. Beautiful historic homes from the late 1700's, 1800's, and early 1900's can be found cheerfully jumbled together in a single block.

The highest point in old Charleston is twelve feet above sea level so not surprisingly it has historically been subject to flooding from heavy rains and hurricane storm surges. And a number of big fires including one just before the Civil War that claimed hundreds of structures. Church spires, some going back to colonial times, still dominate the skyline.

Charleston has been a major port since colonial times. The Carolina low-country gentry got rich farming rice on their plantations which was exported to Europe through Charleston. That economy collapsed, of course, with the end of the Civil War. Today, a wide variety of goods are exported from Charleston including, oddly enough, BMW and Honda cars assembled in South Carolina.

I would highly recommend a visit to this beautiful city - although our guide stressed that the Carolina low-country is NOT a place you want to visit in the summer - even in the 21st century. It is NOT a dry heat in this part of the country. In fact, for most of its history this land was flat-out pestilential - the beautiful resort area of Hilton Head was, in our guide's words, "uninhabitable" until the development of DDT and other pesticides just a few decades ago.

Well, I've successfully killed an hour. Time to take a shower and hit the road.