Carolina!

with your hosts... Mark and Michael Stevens "In the Garden of Good and Concrete" We started out Saturday heading to Magnolia Plantation and Gardens. The Plantation was founded in the 1600s and has survived both war and weather. Here's some pictures of our trip to Magnolia Plantation.

Here's the red Intrigue we've been driving around. Mark is sitting in the drivers seat... prepared to drive away... without Michael!

We took SR61 to Magnolia. 61 is a scenic highway, as you can tell from these pictures. At places the trees would cross the road forming a canopy of sorts.

Here's one of many "authentic" concrete statues at Magnolia Plantation. Any original statues would have been destroyed in the Civil War, but apparently the $18.00 we paid to get in isn't enough to get new ones.

Here's a close up of one of the statues.

Yet another statue. The flower arrangements around the statues were authentic and beautiful though.

A close up of the statue. It's pretty if not real.

This bridge was lined with flowers. It was the only one of it's kind.

Another picture of the flowered bridge from across the water. The gardens were filled with little ponds and lakes. The plantation itself is right off the river, so water is a major part of the gardens.

The water was incredibly blue, almost as if it was dyed. It makes the water look blue, even though the sky was very white. Fortunately it wasn't raining, but everything was very wet. There were places where you would have to straddle puddles just to get across, and our shoes were very muddy.

Some tourists are crossing the water on the flowered bridge.

A closer look at the water. This was Michael's favorite bridge. All the rest felt like they were going to fall apart. Guess they couldn't afford to fix the bridges either.

Here's a dark picture of some of the "realistic" workers. They had many of these in historical fashion. The plantation played down the fact that it relied on slaves, even saying that they enjoyed better living standards than many of those on the frontier.

Here's Mark standing between two flags, reading about the attack on Magnolia by the British.

Here's the plantation house that the owners lived in.

This is the tomb of the owners of Magnolia Plantation and Gardens, the Drayton family. Much of the coffins buried there were destroyed in a great earthquake, and the tomb has been recently opened and restored, so that more family members may be buried there. The cherubs pictured here are marred with bullet marks from the Civil War when Sherman's soldiers looted the gardens and...

...this cherubs nose was taken off by a Union soldiers bayonet!

Here's one of Magnolia's MANY beautiful swamps!

In the distance, a white bridge crosses another swamp. These white bridges were the most common, and nearly all of them were ready to fall apart.

Check out the moss-like substance hanging from the trees. Theses, and the swamps, were beautiful, in their own kind of way.

This was a view from a "wildlife" tower. You can see the swamp marshes and the river in the distance. The tower was about three stories high, and extremely windy on top. Furthermore, the floor was made with pieces of plywood so old you could actually see through them at places. It did not seem particularly safe. They ought to be able to afford quite a bit of plywood with the money they took in today.

Here's Mark with one of the statues. See how happy he is! We love statues.

More swamp! It's kind of pretty.

Amazingly, this red and green mix actually sat above the water. If you didn't know it was a pool, you would have tried to walk through it, it was so thick and stable.

A close up of an iris in the garden.

This girl happened to walk into one of the pictures. She was there with her parents and apparently really didn't want to be there. Michael never saw any expression on her face, so he called her the "android girl."

Mark under one of many great trees. He's talking to...

a woman preparing for a wedding later that day. It was a lousy day for a wedding, and hopefully they weren't honeymooning anywhere around here, because it would be a lousy day for a honeymoon too.

This is a maze that is located at the gardens. Of course we had to try to figure it out.

Huh? Where am I?

Finally, we made it! This was the reward for finding the middle of the maze. A potted plant that you could buy at Home Depot. Of course, you could buy the statues there are well. Great! If you sat through that you deserve a reward! But we did more on Day 2, so continue on to the next page, or go back to the index.