The South Carolina State House

On Friday, May 18 we visited the South Carolina State House in downtown Columbia.  We were staying with friends Kathy and Rocky Stratman who live in Lexington, SC -- about a 45 minute drive.

The South Carolina Statehouse is recognized for its beauty and is the fourth capitol building for the state. Construction was begun in 1855. However, the outbreak of the Civil War slowed construction, and then Union General William T. Sherman trained his cannons on the structure and pretty much ruined everything except the walls.  Today you can see where cannon balls struck the granite walls by looking for a the bronze stars that mark each spot. The building was finally completed in 1907.

The State House interior is really stunning with beautiful woodwork, detailed wrought iron, stained glass, polished brass, ornate ceilings and leather.  This is one of two identical staircases leading to the second floor.

A spacious lobby is outside the house and senate chambers.  The balcony leads to visitor galleys.

I took this photo from the stairs to the balcony in order to show the detail of the iron castings that support the balcony.

This stained glass mosaic is composed of over 3,000 pieces of glass.

The 124 members of the South Carolina House of Representatives cast votes in this chamber. Unfortunately,my photo of the Senate Chamber is not good enough to include.

The State House sits on 18 beautifully landscaped grounds replete with many monuments.  This bronze casting is one part of a much larger African American History Monument and is the first of its kind on any state capitol's grounds.  This is a representation of a ship's hold with 336 enslaved Africans chained together for the duration of the trans-Atlantic voyage.  It really makes you think about how we were as a country back in the 19th Century.


How fortunate we are that so much of our history in all 50 states has been preserved for future generations to discover.


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Back to Lexington


Sandy and I spent Saturday and Sunday morning with Kathy and Rocky at their lovely home on the shore of Lake Murray.

We talked, play games, shared good food, played with the dogs and spent time on the back porch overlooking the yard.

I also volunteered to help Rocky witrh a small repair project on their house.  Sandy was on standby to hand me necessary tools and suggestions.

Here is Beaux after a game of Frisbee in the back yard. And...

...here is Stella ...and

...here is Stella again in her hang-dog look.  She had  just been busted for opening and sampling a couple of bars of goat milk soap from Florida.  Can't you just see the guilt written all over her face?
Beaux, being a younger and wiser dog, immediately left the room.  We all had a great laugh.


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We might end up on TV


On Sunday, May 20 we left Lexington and drove about 160 miles to Black Mountain, SC.  A small community at the base of the Great Smoky Mountains.  On the way we decided to stop for lunch.  We didn't want a fast food meal and found a restaurant in the small community of Clinton, SC called FATZ.  

While FATZ does not strike me as a good name for a small chain with 42 stores, it has excellent food and service.  We were warmly greeted at the front door and given a booth in the bar area.  The bar was closed for Sunday and we soon discovered why we were there.


They company was filming new commercials for TV and were looking for suitable, non-Madison Avenue types to be interviewed without any script or prompting.  I guess they thought we looked respectable enough and so they moved us to the main dining room
where we were interviewed on camera before and after our meal.


But instead of getting union scale, we had our meals comped.  All in all another unique adventure on the road. 

BOONE HALL PLANTATION

Boone Hall Plantation here in Mount Pleasant, SC was founded in 1681 making it one of the oldest continuously operated plantations in America.  It requires the better part of a day to take in all that is 

here to see.  At first we were a little disappointed that this mansion is not the original house, but once we learned the long history we understood.  This house was begun in 1935 when one of the more recent owners bought the plantation.  There were three previous homes that were replaced due to causes other than the Civil War.  The main house is still used as a private residence, but is open to guided tours during the day.  Interior photographs are not permitted, but it is beautiful.

The flower garden in front is continually being changed.

The brick wall is made from bricks that were produced in the brick works at Boone Plantation.  Bricks also became a cash crop for the farm and more than 1,000,000 of the bricks were used in building Fort Sumter.  All the bricks used in plantation buildings were made by slaves.

Our tour assembled on the front porch where our docent/guide explained the blue color of the ceiling as "haint blue" which derives from a Gullah legend that the blue color would keep evil spirits ("haints") and demons from the home.

The nearly one mile long drive from the highway to the main house is lined with live oaks originally planted in 1743 by the son of Major John Boone.  It took nearly 200 years for the branches to grow over the road to form this lovely arch.

On our way out I took this photo of the live oak sentinels. 

The main crops from the plantation were originally indigo, cotton, rice, pecans as well as bricks.  At one point there were 15,000 pecan trees on the grounds, but hurricanes have reduced that number to about 400. 

 The wharf

All crops leaving and coming to Boone Hall were transported on a tidal stream to and from Charleston and were processed through the dock house.  This photo shows a recently re-created dock house to replace the one Hurricane Andrew removed in1989. Because it was a tidal stream shipments had to be timed to take advantage of high tide and it usually took six to seven hours to travel to Charleston.

Today produce from the farm is sold off premises in a new building which houses the farm market and a restaurant.   We went there for lunch:  grilled crab sandwich with pimento cheese and a slice of friend green tomato on multi-grain bread, sweet potato fries dusted with cinnamon,  iced tea and a slice of homemade layered coconut cake with a custard filling.  D-e-l-i-c-i-o-u-s. 

As beautiful as the plantation is it is also a place that forces one to reflect on the sad history of slavery in the United States.  On the grounds are nine of the original 27 slave quarters made from brick.  But, not all slaves lived in brick structures.  Those slaves who worked the fields lived in wooden one room "homes" without windows, doors or floors.

Each of the nine slave quarters provides historical information about slave life on the plantation and in the south.

The wall of this slave house was truly sad.  Photographs of slaves were displayed along with their comments about their remembrances of life on the plantation.  

This chart is a record of slave ships that landed in Charleston from 1711 to 1858 and shows port of departure, number of slaves on board at time of sailing and number of slaves on board at time of landing.

Of the 173,705 slaves who boarded ships during that time only 147,131 survived -- which means the loss of 26,574 lives.  Keep in mind that this is just at one port of the southeast U.S. coast where slave ships landed.

At the last slave building Jackie Mikel gave a one woman half hour performance about Gullah/Geechee life at Boone Plantation.  It was fascinating and thought provoking.  She was not only extremely talented, but very charming.  Most guests feel this is the highlight of their visit to the plantation and we would agree. 

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We are no longer travelling in a motorhome.  Our vehicle is a Toyota Tundra pickup truck to which we added a cap over the cargo bed and a bed slide to make it easy to access cargo.  Being on vacation for four months requires a fair amount of stuff as you can see from these two photos.

Cargo tray slides out and locks in position for access to our stuff

Back seats are latched in the up position for even more storage.

Stay tuned

On the road again -- To Charleston, SC

Charleston, SC,  Tuesday, May 15, 2012 -- We left Inverness yesterday morning and drove 392 miles to Charleston, SC to meet up with good friend Kathy Stratman and to spend some time visiting this beautiful southern port city.


As we approached Charleston we could not help but notice this stunning bridge.

The Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge, also known as the New Cooper River Bridge, is a cable-stayed bridge over the Cooper River in South Carolina, connecting downtown Charleston to Mount Pleasant. The eight lane bridge satisfied the capacity of U.S. Route 17 when it opened in 2005 to replace two obsolete cantilever truss bridges. The bridge has a main span of 1,546 feet (471 m), the third longest among cable-stayed bridges in the Western Hemisphere. It was built using the design-build method and was designed by Parsons Brinckerhoff.  from Wikipedia.


This morning we drove about 4 miles into the heart of the city to play tourist.  We wanted to take a horse-drawn carriage ride, visit the open air market and enjoy some good southern food for lunch.  We accomplished our objectives.


Over the years I have read about the sweet grass baskets which are hand woven by local artisans.  The baskets are labor intensive and very expensive.  Sandy and I spoke to a few of the weavers and figured out that based on the selling price and the number of hours needed to make the basket that the artisians are getting only about $10 and hour for their efforts.

I spoke with this seller about the large round basket.  He said it is an African Wedding Basket and that it took him six months to create.  His asking price is $32,000.  Yes.  That is correct. It was just a little too steep for our budget.


Here are some of the many beautiful homes and buildings we rode past in the morning.

Many streets in the old part of the city were built using the ballast stones from ships.  While they are not the smoothest, they certainly last a long time.

The yellow sided house dates to pre-Revolutionary War days.  All of the other above houses are from the 1800s.

Our tour guide pointed out that while this home has the appearance of being constructed of stone it is actually made from  blocks of black cypress cut to resemble stone.  There was no native stone in this area so homes are mostly made from brick or stucco covered.

We had lunch in this small secluded  garden-like setting.

After lunch we visited the Old Exchange & Provost Dungeon where we were treated to an outstanding tour from a docent who clearly loved what he was doing.  The building served as a prison where a few unfortunate Revolutionary War heroes were murdered as were assorted pirates and criminals.

On the 2nd floor The Old Exchange is The Great Hall where George Washington was welcomed to the city.  There is a ton of history in this charming city.


Tomorrow -- weather permitting -- we hope to visit one of the larger plantations in the area.


We'll be back with more soon.

The John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art at Sarasota, Florida

We decided to take a day trip to the Ringling museum in Sarasota, FL.  In case the name Ringling has a familiar name it is because it is one and the same as Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus.


If you saw the PBS special last year with Jackie Ivanko (spelling) it was videotaped on the grounds.  It is a magnificent place.  The entire John Ringling estate has been turned into a wonderful museum.  


I will include a few photos here to give you and idea of what we saw -- and there was much I could not possibly do justice to with my camera.

Sarasota is a two-hour drive from our home, so if you come visit us --this is one place you might want to go see.

A front view of the winter home of John and Mable Ringling.  It was completed on Christmas Eve 1926 at a cost of about $1.5 million dollars.  John originally gave Mable $250,000 for the house.  Like a good wife, she came in slightly over budget. 

We were not allowed to take flash photos, so some of my photos were not the best.  This is the ballroom.

This is the hand-painted ceiling of the ballroom.  The artist lived on the property in a smaller house for over two years as he did many paintings on ceilings and walls.  Fast forward to the 21st century and the excellent docent who led our tour recalled the time recently when one of her visitors identified herself as the daughter of the artist who did the ceilings.  Now that was an amazing day for her. 

This was a bar from St. Louis that John Ringling bought during Prohibition and had it taken apart and re-assembled at Ca' d'Zan in Sarasota. 

John Ringling's bedroom.

Mable Ringling's bathroom

The courtyard was at the center of the home.  The chandelier was from the original Waldorf Hotel in New York City. 

There is an outstanding fine dining restaurant on the premises called Treviso.  I give it 3.5 stars.  We had lunch on the restaurant terrace. 

The grounds are beautiful.  The lower photo is of a cluster of Banyon trees.  


On the way home I saw something I wish I could have documented with a photo.  We passed a car.  The driver was holding a salad with her left hand and using a fork with her right had.  We were moving at 70 MPH.  A friend of mine says: "you can't fix stupid."