June 2 Day 9

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Day 9, and our day included some more time in the historic district of Charleston.

Below is a section of homes on Bay Street known as the rainbow row.   It is referred to as Rainbow Row for the pastel colors used to paint all of the houses. It is a common tourist attraction and is one of the most photographed parts of Charleston.

After the Civil War, this area of Charleston devolved into near slum conditions. In the early 1900s, Dorothy Porcher Legge purchased a section of these houses numbering 99 through 101 East Bay and began to renovate them. She chose to paint these houses pink based on a colonial Caribbean color scheme. Other owners and future owners followed suit, creating the "rainbow" of pastel colors present today. The coloring of the houses helped keep the houses cool inside as well as give the area its name.

Common myths concerning Charleston include variants on the reasons for the paint colors. According to some tales, the houses were painted in the various colors such that the intoxicated sailors coming in from port could remember which houses they were to bunk in. In other versions, the colors of the buildings date from their use as stores; the colors were used so that owners could tell illiterate slaves which building to go to for shopping.

Here are a few more of the rainbow row homes.

Below are some additional homes in the historic district.  Many of these are huge antebellum homes.  And many of them have fabulous porches.

More porches...  this is just one wing of the home.

Multiple floors of porches...

Got that idea at this point???  These folks enjoy their porches :)

This home is located on Meeting Street, in fact, the address is Two Meeting Street.  It happens to be an Inn where one of Lennie's co-workers stays when he vacations in Charleston.  It's a magnificent looking home and in case you didn't notice, it has a huge porch.

Right along the waterfront in the historic district is White Point Garden, which some people also refer to as Battery Park.  There are a number of large cannons/guns located in the park. 

You can get a feel for the size of the mortar below based on the little boy standing next to it.  The kids love to climb on the guns and the balls.

There are a number of companies that run narrated carriage rides through the historic district.

This is the "big red barn" that one of the carriage ride companies uses to house its carriages and horses.

After wrapping up in Charleston, Lennie and I wanted to visit one of the many historic plantation homes in the Charleston area.  After a little research, we decided to visit the Middleton Place plantation.

Built in several phases throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, the plantation was the primary residence of several generations of the Middleton family, many of whom played prominent roles in the colonial and antebellum history of South Carolina. The plantation, now a National Historic Landmark District, currently functions as a museum, and is home to the oldest landscaped gardens in the United States.

John Williams, an early South Carolina planter, began building Middleton Place in the late 1730s. His son-in-law Henry Middleton, who later served as President of the First Continental Congress, completed the house's main section and its north and south flankers, and began work on the elaborate gardens. Middleton's son, Arthur Middleton, a signer of Declaration of Independence, was born at Middleton Place, and resided at the plantation in the last years of his life. Arthur Middleton's son and grandson, Henry Middleton and Williams Middleton, oversaw Middleton Place's transition from a country residence to a more active rice plantation. 

Below is the South Flanker which was originally used to house male guests to the plantation.

In 1865, toward the end of the U.S. Civil War, Union soldiers burned most of the house, leaving only the south wing and gutted walls of the north wing and main house. An earthquake in 1886 toppled the walls of the main house and north wing.

Below is what is left of the main home location.

The restoration of Middleton Place largely began in 1916 with the efforts of Middleton descendant John Julius Pringle Smith and his wife Heningham, both of whom would spend several decades meticulously rebuilding the plantation's gardens. In the early 1970s, approximately 110 acres of the 7,000-acre plantation— including the south flanker, the gardens, and several outbuildings— were placed on the National Register of Historic Places. During the same period the Middleton descendants transferred ownership of the historic district to the non-profit Middleton Place Foundation, which presently maintains the site.

Below is the front yard of the main home site.  The river was used as the main mode of transportation from the plantation to downtown Charleston.

Below is a small church on the property along the river.

Before the civil war, the plantation housed roughly 800 slaves.  After the war ended, a number of those slaves stayed on the plantation with the Middleton family as paid workers.  Below is one of the homes used by the now freed slaves.  It was set up as a sort of duplex, and housed one worker in each half.

Of course the plantation has hundreds of these huge Spanish moss covered oaks that you expect to see on an old southern plantation.  Some of them are estimated to be 1000 years old. And many of them have a trunk girth of over 4 feet.

It's amazing how large these trees can be.

As indicated earlier, the Middleton plantation claims to have the oldest landscaped gardens in the US.  

This area is called azalea lake, which is obviously surrounded by azalea plants.  When they bloom in the spring, they are likely spectacular.

This oak has a limb that seems to reach out into the reflecting pond.

There are also a large number of hydrangea plants in the garden, and they were in bloom during our visit.

After a narrated carriage ride around the plantation grounds, a tour of the south flanker home, and a walk through many of the garden areas, we decided to head toward our next hotel stop for the night in Columbia SC.

From Columbia SC, we have about 635 miles to get home.  It currently looks like we will cover 400 miles on Sunday, and the remaining 235 on Monday.

Today we rode 159 miles from Charleston SC to the Middleton Plantation, then on to Columbia SC.  This brings our trip total to 2198 miles.  Below is a map of today's route.