Magnolia Plantation

This month you can get a buy one get one free ticket to Magnolia Plantation. They ask you to print out a coupon from their website before you go. The ticket taker was impressed I had actually done that.  
We finally got on the road at about 10. We had a great breakfast of mickey mouse waffles and bacon!  We brought Jack with us too

The road on the way to the parking area

From the back seat, is that a real swamp?
Yes, that is a real swamp.
with ducks

It's a long drive way

Little ponies and big trees
They are behind the ticket booth

They still had Santa's Village buildings set up. It was very muddy back there. The boys did not want to play there very long

We found the petting zoo. The first animal that came up to us was this lovely girl. She was very friendly. She loved the boys  even when they ran out of food

Petting the deer. Lon was surprised by how very soft a deer is.

Time to go see the gardens

Winter blooming camellias
They had a lot of them in the gardens

A rice boat model.

There was also a boat landing at Magnolia

Garden paths

The plantation house. It was built on the ruins of the first floor. All the was left after Sherman burned it.

Reading the history signs

A full size rice trunk.  Lon was not sure what it was at first since he had only seen models before! Then he started explaining how they worked to drain the water from the rice fields into the river.

flight

We are now on a mission to find the wildlife observation tower

A little history first

We found it!!  You can sort of make out the boys at the top.
There was another guy up there who started shaking the railing. This freaked the boys out.  It was not a very nice thing to do
The observation tower is on the far side of the gardens, time to start working out way back

The boys were amazed by this, is it a tree, a really thick vine? what caused it to grow like that?

a little bit about the tree pictured above

On our way out we passed the slave cabins.  They had signs that said no parking. so it was jut a quick photo

We had a good time walking through all the trails and seeing the gardens.
We like Middleton a little better, a bit more compact at Middleton and there are lots of people around for Lon to talk to about the plantation.  
It was a great day to get outside. 65 degrees on January 20!