Magnolia Plantation

 After touring Drayton Hall, we went down the road and toured the Magnolia Plantation. The house at Magnolia had been destroyed during the revolutionary war, rebuilt and is now restored. It was beautiful and was surrounded by beautiful gardens. I'll get to that later.

This photo of Ben and Sara is blurry so I can't enlarge it, but I liked it so much I couldn't delete it.

 The greeting party at Magnolia included a number of peacocks.

Peacocks are so strange to me, 

beautiful from the front and naked looking on the back.

This guy posed nicely for me.

 Pretty civilized peacocks who expect to be fed at the table!

 It was fun to take this tour with Ben and Sara.

 Around the outer parts of the plantation, things were a bit spooky-looking.

Sara loved the swampy areas!

 Our guide told us this site was used in the old movie, Swamp Thing.

I will say that I do NOT want to go swimming there!

 I was intrigued by these little stumpy things around the bases of these trees.

Friends from the South, what kind of tree is that and will those little

things grow up to be more trees?

To me, they kind of looked like little gophers surrounding

the base of the trees.

 I know these birds are perfectly fine birds

but don't they look a bit evil?

I was about to delete this photo, not because it was so bad 

but I took soooooo many photos, editing is necessary.

Thankfully, I decided to enlarge it just in case I was missing something.

And there he is, a baby alligator!

We were told there were some really big ones there in the ponds

but they were elusive on our tour. This little guy showed up for us, though.

We then moved in closer to the house, touring the beautiful gardens.

This is pretty, don't you think?

There's the house.

Nice, huh?

Poor Ben and Sara.

I made them pose until they were sick of it.

We were touring through an area called the romantic gardens.

The original home was destroyed in 1780 by the British.

That was a long time ago!

Ben and I braved the garden maze.

Sara waited outside; I was

confident she would rescue us if we couldn't

find our way out.

It got a little frustrating at times

but it was kind of fun.

I followed Ben for awhile then we went our own ways.

Thankfully, we made it back to each other at the end!

Drayton Hall

Last Friday night, right as our conference was ending, Ben and Sara arrived from North Carolina to spend the week-end with us. I am so glad they came!

Last Saturday we toured Drayton Hall, an unrestored plantation just about 20 minutes from downtown Charleston, SC.  Isn't it beautiful? From a distance, it still looks habitable. As you will see, it is not exactly move-in ready.

It sits along the Ashley River and from a distance, looks much like it did in the 1700's. It is a survivor. It has survived the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the earthquake of 1886 as well as numerous hurricanes.

The house is an example of Georgian-Palladian architecture and the grounds are a beautifully undisturbed historic landscape. Our tour guide said that it was the only plantation house along the Ashley River that wasn't destroyed during the war (I think she was talking Revolutionary War but maybe Civil War) because it was posted as a smallpox hospital.

The neighboring plantation, Magnolia, was owned by the Drayton family as well. It was inherited by their oldest son so a younger son had Drayton Hall built nearby. He was only 23 or so when he became the master of this place! He lost 3 wives and a couple of his son to disease and such. He married his fourth wife when he was 59. She was 17. I don't know what to say about that.

I loved this tour! Here, let me show you some of the highlights...

It was about a zillion degrees out, but Ben and Sara waited patiently for our tour to begin.

 This is one of the huge Live Oak Trees.

There were many there, some over 200 years old!

 As we entered the house, I instantly noticed that it was full of little details.

It wasn't a typical suburban home.

Many of the parts of the interior were shipped from Europe.

 Remember all those windows you could see from the outside?

Each of them has a window seat!

We learned that symmetry was very important to this style of architecture.

There wasn't a front door and a back door but rather two grand entrances.

One was for those who arrived by the river and

the other welcomed guests arriving by land.

This brick wall was discovered when they took out a sealed door.

Why a fake door?

It was there to balance the actual door for entering the room.

By the way, all of the bricks were hand made, likely by slave labor.

These are obviously well-made bricks, having held up since the 1700's.

More lovely details...

This is a skinny stairwell that ran up the center of the house.

It was to be used by slaves as they served the family.

They were pretty modest compared to the main stairway.

This is one side of the grand stairway.

Of course, there had to be two sides for symmetry.

This was taken in an upstairs ballroom, I think.

 This is Ben at the entrance to the basement.

It was a place where the slaves were to do the work for the family, likely preparing the meals, processing the garden vegetables, etc.

The basement wasn't not grand.

I loved the grounds!

Ben is standing by the Ashley River.

The land across the river had been donated to remain untouched.

It was really wonderful as standing there looking across at a Walmart would

certainly ruin the effect.

I LOVE Spanish Moss.

Just so you know,

it isn't Spanish...

and it isn't moss.

 The maintained grounds were surrounded by swampy places.

There are soooo many creepy-crawlies in there!

It was noisy!

And yes, there are alligators.

Can anyone tell me what these are?

Figs, maybe?

As I said, creepy crawlies.

Oddly, just the day before, Nicole had asked me to try to get a photo of a Cicada.

This one actually fell out of a tree as we walked by it.

That was handy.

This is definitely NOT Wyoming vegetation!

I enjoyed a last look at Drayton Hall.

Tears at the Citadel

The main purpose of our trip was to attend the convocation of the North American Lutheran Church. Mike and our friend, Nicole, were the official representatives for our congregation. Nicole's husband, Chad came along as a visitor, as did I.

Yes, the meeting was held at the Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina. I was really excited. We'd never been to South Carolina before and I love seeing new places!

I thought the Citadel was strictly a military school. I was wrong. Did you know that they also serve as a civilian college?  If you want to read more about the history of the Citadel, please go to this site.  I will tell you a few things, though.

The original site of the Citadel was actually downtown, closer to the harbor. We did see that site from the outside several times before we learned what it really had been. The original site looks quite a bit like the current one. I really hope you will click to see what it has become. It is a little bit sad but at least it is somewhat preserved. Nope, I'm not going to tell you. You have to click here.

So, most of our time those first 2 days was spent at Summerall Chapel at the Citadel. What a beautiful building!  It belongs to no denomination and is there simply as a place of worship.

Take a look at the inside. The building is shaped like a cross and this view is from the bottom of that cross shape so I didn't really get the entire interior. There were probably 1,000 people there. Listening to them all sing, especially with so many male voices, was enough to bring tears to my eyes....and down my cheeks. Actually, I was kind of embarrassed that I had to keep wiping my face dry but I learned later that I was not the only one. Music is so powerful!

 There were flags for all the states. I took a photo of the Wyoming flag especially for my friend, Nicole.

This is Chad during one of our breaks. He was sitting by a water purification station. It was a display for Water Missions International, a group who helps those in need of clean water. They do this globally. It is a project our local congregation helps support. Their headquarters happen to be in Charleston so Chad and Nicole actually took a tour of it.

 Nicole took this photo for me. Mike had been called up to be honored with others for their work for the church. Mike, of course, was being honored for his 25 years as a pastor. Another tear-filled moment came for me when these people received a standing ovation.

One of the coolest places on campus was the clock tower. I actually decided to see if I could go in it and found that it was unlocked. You might be surprised at what I discovered inside. I'll get those photos ready for tomorrow.