March 31 ….. getting ready for my second trip of the season, to Charleston, South Carolina. Oh, what a day….. the trek was packed, food, clothes, all the kitchen stuff, everything.
April 1 – So….. I left freezing temps with several inches of snow on the ground and headed first to my older daughter and her family in New Jersey. I took my daughter and her children with me to continue the trip. After having a short visit we were on our way South, headed toward Charleston, South Carolina. We decided to meander our way down, going down the Western side of the mountains using 81 to Harrisonburg, VA. We stayed at a beautiful campground at Endless Caverns. What a nice campground! Daffodils blooming all over, stone walls built around the campground lots. Nice facilities. We didn’t tour the caverns, no dogs allowed plus it was a mile-long walk and we decided to get going on our way to Charleston. So off we went down RT 11 until we got down near Charleston. What a nice ride. Pretty countryside, rolling hills, cattle all over with babies.
Well after a couple of days of meandering, we got to Oak Plantation Campground in Charleston. Nice place, some of the old oak trees are still on the property along with a pond for fishing…. and an alligator to keep us all on our toes. Our first fun thing was to go to Magnolia Plantation and Gardens. It is a huge plantation with a remaining 500 acres or so, over 60 acres of which are beautiful gardens. We went on a boat tour of the old rice fields which was nice and informative, saw too many alligators…and we went on a tour on a tram around the plantation as well. That was nice…. we saw some beautiful parts of the property, as well as the old slave houses, swamps and other lowlands with alligators and lots of kinds of birds. The trees are all leafed out here, it has been hot and humid, nice place to visit but wouldn’t want to live here LOL. The pups were great, they got tired easily and had to be carried a few times because of all the heat. We had their water bottle with us of course. A couple of times, we parked in the shade and turned on the generator and air conditioning, and left them inside for an hour or so. They needed the rest from the heat. None of us are used to it!
Below are a lot of pics of that plantation as well as many other places we went to. Please enjoy…. we decided to stay a couple of extra nights at this same campground since it is so nice, and see a couple more places. So we went into the city of Charleston. My daughter hates cities, I have no idea why we went, except she was trying to make me happy. She is so sweet… well, we stayed about 30 minutes, walked down a short way on King Street, and decided the city isn’t for us. I said, let’s go. We then went to Drayton Hall and toured the huge home there.
We saw many places, and I have put a lot of pics below. Might make the page slow to load, but here they all are 🙂 Just click on each picture, and enjoy!
