Boone Plantation

Friday, June 26, 2015

What a luxury to have a relaxing morning! Since our Harbor Cruise was cancelled for the funeral today, we did not have any early morning activitiy plan. For the first time while here, we drove the car to the Boone Plantation.

 

The entry drive to the Plantation is lined with live oak. "Live" because they are green year round.

The Spanish Moss that hangs from the live oak is an air plant and not a parasite, so does not damage the trees. Along the limbs of the trees, "resurrection" ferns grow. They are brown and look dead when dried out, but the moment it rains they are resurrected to green and healthy.

 

We took the trolley tour through the plantation but not much to see.

We saw where cotton grew during that era (where the slaves worked twelve hours a day), but is now a farming area for produce that is sold from there. After the cotton business was done with, thousands of pecan trees were planted. Those trees have shallow roots, and were easily blown down in several hurricanes, now there are very few left.

 

I don't know what this plant is, but I found it interesting.

After touring the grounds we explored Slave Street.

 

 

 

Only the top helpful slaves had these houses

The slaves that were more craftsmen -- carpenters, brick makers, and other such trades lived in the brick houses that were fairly near the "Big House". As spartan as they were, they were much nicer than the field hands' homes of wood with no windows and one room way out in the fields.

 

Slaves could not attend church, so they held services in one of the houses

 

A bed on one side of the unpartitioned room and a kitchen/sitting/living room on the other, with a fireplace on the wall between

The most interesting part of our visit to Boone was the story teller whose name I do not remember. She gave a live presentation of teh evolution and development of teh "Gullah Culture" here in the Lowcountry.

 

The stage is set

 

She begins by dedicating this performance to the nine people who were killed last week

 

She talks, sings and animates life as it developed over the decades

 

We took the tour of the antebellum style mansion built in 1936. We found the tour to be nothing special.

We treated ourselves to ice cream at the Butterfly Cafe and did a short visit of the butterfly garden there. Then it was time to drive back to town.

 

The bridge on Route 17 is eye catching and very pretty

A HOT HOT HOT HUMID DAY! Wish I could do what these kids were doing...

"Swimming" in the fountain

Back in town we walked to dinner and on a side spur ran into this cooling activity for kids "of all ages". There has to be some way of cooling off in the heat!

Tomorrow we head for Savannah, GA.

 

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