A fast boat and an old house

I just realized that I'd never bothered to post a picture of our hotel, so I thought it would be a good way to kick off today's blog. If you ever visit Charleston, we highly recommend it. Among many perks...the location couldn't possibly be better. There. Commercial over. :)

Our first activity today, a boat ride on the Thriller speedboat, we agreed might have been our favorite thing that we've done our entire trip! The boat is a high speed catamaran (double hull) that leaves from a dock near the battery and then takes approximately an hour long tour through the ocean past, Ft. Sumter to the Morris Island Lighthouse where the boat turns around. We then headed back to the harbor and sailed past Ft. Moultrie, the U.S.S. Yorktown, and the Cooper River Bridge before returning to the dock. Barbara, the tour guide, struck a great balance between dispensing interesting facts about what we were seeing, and being quiet and letting us enjoy the ride accompanied by 80's rock music. Her husband, Mark, was the boat captain, and did a great job of steering us through some fantastic waves! A MUST if you visit Charleston!

Keith and I on board the Thriller....check out the spray behind us from the boat! (The sunglasses were borrowed....I do not actually own these!)


Some of the big waves made your stomach flip-flop! LOVED it!


The Morris Island lighthouse. It's in dire need of repair due to erosion and such. If you'd like to help keep the lighthouse around...check out this website.


A full length view of the Thriller...back at the dock after her morning jaunt.

After the Thriller, we pulled through Starbucks for a snack and then on to Middleton Place mansion and gardens. We wandered through the gardens for a little bit and then took a tour of the house. The house was actually originally the southern wing of the original mansion...built as a guest wing for gentlemen who stayed on the grounds. The rest of the mansion was burned and only this wing was rebuilt and became the main house. We then ate lunch at the garden shop cafe and concluded our visit with an approximately hour long self-guided tour of the gardens. The gardens bear the distinction of being America's oldest landscaped gardens. They are absolutely beautiful.


The "Wood Nymph" statue in the gardens at Middleton Place.


A view from one end of the "Reflection Pool."


Keith stands on a limb of one of the countless huge "live oak" trees on the Middleton Place grounds.


The cypress bridge...one of the spots I loved the most.

We concluded the day with take-out from TBONZ Gill & Grill, and ordered the same Ahi Tuna and grouper sandwiches that we'd ordered the other night and a marathon of Deadliest Catch, The Office, and the Colbert Report.

OH! And I almost forgot! We were supposed to drive back to Nashville tomorrow morning, but we're having so much fun that we decided we needed one more day of vacation. (we're not very good at going home....if you remember this also happened when we went to Hawaii in January!) So instead we're getting up and driving back to Columbia to go tubing down the river...something I was dissapointed that we didn't have time to do last weekend. We're then crashing with Keith's Mom and Rick for one more night and heading back to Nashville on Thursday instead! Which means....dum dum dum da dum....one more day of the blog from South Carolina! Enjoy!