We just got back from another glorious weekend in the Lowcountry. This was our 4th time visiting Charleston, each time to celebrate my birthday and we just never get tired of it. The gas lantern lined streets, the twisting live oaks dripping with Spanish moss, the architecture...and the food! Oh my god, the food. If we hadn't walked like 15 miles each day, we'd have to roll ourselves back to Raleigh!
Having spent a good bit of time in downtown Charleston during our last trips, we decided to venture outside town this time. On Saturday, our first full day, we headed about an hour south to Beaufort, hitting the Old Sheldon Church ruins on the way. With no address to enter into the gps, we had to rely on only our concierge's crazy directions that used peach cider stores and dirt roads as landmarks. But once we got there it did not disappoint. The church, or what is left of it, has been sitting in the woods for over 120 years. Once one of the most impressive churches in the colonies, it was burnt once by the British during the Revolutionary war and then rebuilt...only to be burned again by Sherman on his march thru the South. All that stands now are the large outer walls, main aisle and alter, all surrounded by towering live oak trees.
But even a cool old church can only keep Neil's attention for so long...*yawn*, time to get back on the road!
Our final destination for the day was Beaufort, the quintessential sleepy little southern town. Every street is lined with gorgeous antebellum homes with porches that seem to go on for miles, all perfectly framed by gas lanterns and 800 year old live oaks dripping in Spanish moss. Seriously, they are not messing around with the trees in this little town. Besides being the place where Forrest Gump was filmed, it was also a stronghold of the Confederacy during the Civil War and is loaded with history. We took at long walking tour with a guy named John Sharp...quite a quirky character. Once you get over his weird turquoise chandelier earring (totally serious), he's actually a great tour guide.
Very cool old church that was used as a horse stall by Union soldiers during the war!
...with a spooky old graveyard in the back.
After getting the general lay of the land here, we started moving through some of the most picturesque streets I've ever seen with beautiful old summer "cottages" built by wealthy plantation owners as a way of escaping the insane summer heart and coming to the coast. They are all built in typical lowcountry style with a southward orientation to maximize seabreezes. If you've ever been in the South in August and spent even 10 minutes without A/C you'll understand why you'd go to such lengths to build your house so it caught as much breeze as possible!
...and virtually all of them have insanely large live oaks in the front yard!
...and sometimes the tree gets so big it becomes what they refer to as an "angel oak" where the limbs literally rest on the ground and keep on growing.
Even the garages are adorable in this town!
What a nice door to come home to huh?
Many parts of Beaufort did not escape Sherman's march and there are little spooky relics of what was left behind once he came through...like these random stairs that used to lead to a house.
On our way out of town, we caught a nice picture of a bust of Robert Smalls, a Beaufort resident who was born a slave and escaped to the north at the start of the Civil War. Once the war was over he returned to Beaufort and bought the home he was formerly a servant in at auction with the money he'd saved while working up north. How awesome is that? He went on to become the first black congressman.
Back in Charleston on Sunday we continued our eating tour with a stop at our favorite breakfast place, the Hominy Grill.
...already a line out the door by 10 am!
Um, yes, could I wash down my sweet potato pecan pancakes with some she-crab gravy? Why can't I get she-crab anything over the South Carolina border? It really is a tragedy.
Ok that's it for today! Tomorrow's post will be all about our day trip to Middleton Plantation and me imagining myself strolling around with a parasol and a Charleston drawl....
-d
0 comments:
Post a Comment