Happy President's Day!

Today was a day off school! I had originally planned on us going up to Cowpens National Battlefield.  I looked up the hours and it was going to be closed today!  Time to move on to another plan!  I opened up the book South Carolina One Day At A Time and it was at Georgetown County.  Sounded like a good plan.   So off we went.  The weather, I was pretty sure, said it was going to be a chilly start but into the 50s and sunny for the day.  This was not how it turned out.

17A going north

Love these old shacks along the side of the road. I hope that I can get more photos of them, as I am pretty sure they will be gone soon

Our first stop of the day!

The gardens have lots and lots of sculpture.  More than 450 of them, sculpted by over 200 different artists.  The Huntington's bought three plantations and merged them to form Brookgreen. Anna Hyatt Huntington was a sculptor.  He was Archer Milton Huntington.

At the welcome center.  They have all the plants that are in bloom on the table. I can imagine that during the spring and summer the table is very full.

Egret.

Lon liked the dog sculpture.  We then had a long conversation about what would happen if we found a stray dog. Would we bring him home too? Wouldn't that be cool? What would Daddy say? Or should we just bring him home and hope for the best?  All good questions.

There were wild turkeys roaming around the grounds.
Love the colors of those birds

Giant grey squirrel. These are huge. They have a little masked face.  They are also very fast

One of the sculptures we saw in the movie. We watched the welcome movie before we went out into the gardens. It was only 10 minutes. The docents were impressed that Lon wanted to watch it, or would even give it a try

Into the a sculpture area

Lots of sculptures, more than we could probably absorb on one very cold day.
It was 36 degrees.  It was not getting warmer.

I love old wrought iron work

A little boy and a lamb sundial. Lon was looking for the sun.

Photos of the sculptors creating their art

This one is called Susan. Lon thought that was amusing

There is ice on this pond!
ICE

The whole sculpture.

Really? MORE ICE!  Lon was so cold at this point we were heading back to the welcome center. Windy and 36 is not a fun time outside

Lon and the Lion.

Lon did part of the booklet, Brookgreen Detectives. He did not fill out all of it and they understood.
He got a ruler and a pencil anyway!

Back in the car, leaving Brookgreen. We will come back when it is a little warmer

We drove up to Murrell's Inlet. 19 miles south of Myrtle Beach.  We looked for a place to eat. Many many places were closed for the season. We looked for a seafood place that was open and had more than one or two cars. We chose a seafood place since Murrell's Inlet boasts that it is the Seafood Capital of South Carolina.
The place we chose was Inlet Crab House.   The music playing inside was the same station we had playing in the car!
This glass was the parking lot. What a great option. There were some oyster shells near the edges too

Lon still warming up.

Looking at the shipwreck map on the wall.

Adult portion flounder basket.
Lon ate most of it.
I got cod. It was very good.

After lunch we went up to Garden City Pier.  To see the beach.  Well, we saw it. Lots of seagulls, It was very pretty and still cold.

That was about as far onto the beach as we got.

From Murrell's Inlet we started back south, we stopped at Huntington Beach.  This is across the street from Brookgreen.  It is now a state park, it used to be owned by the same people that owned Brookgreen. The Huntingtons. They also had their winter home there, Atalaya.

We did not really stop on the causeway, just went really really slow. Slow enough to take some photos.  It had warmed up to 37 by this time. There were no alligators anywhere to be seen!

Lon in the giant Adirondack chair! This one is painted in Game Cock colors!

Equal time in the Clemson chair!

These were in front of the gift shop. We did look and realized we did not get postcards at Brookgreen!  So we got some from Huntington!! Lon will work on those after school tomorrow

There was an additional charge ($2.00 each) to go into Atalaya. But we wanted to see it

More information about the Huntingtons!

This is the indoor studio space. It seems that they took everything out of the buildings. I am not sure why they stripped out everything for the buildings.

They told us that Mrs. Huntington used real bears she got from the Bronx zoo as her models for the bear sculptures she did.  She let them roam around her studio space as she worked.  Not sure I would do that. Lon said he would not do that in a million years.

They have signs on the walls that tell you what the area used to be. I would love to see pictures of the place before everything was taken out of it

The central hallway. There was a courtyard on each side with the rooms around the outside.

Getting ready to walk to the beach

But not before we checked out the out buildings. This is the oyster shucking house. Lon says he still smells oysters. They loved seafood. They had an oysterman, and oyster shucker and and a seafood provider on payroll.  They had a lot of servants for just the two of them.

This is where the bears lived when they were not frolicking around the studio

The beach

Lon did not really want to go any farther onto the beach, let's just take the picture and get going !
It really is as cold as it looks

Back across the causeway. This is a  rice trunk.
Lon thinks it is cool that he knows what these are all about. They help regulate the water in the rice fields

More birds!

Great blue heron! How cool is that? Lon spotted him!

On our way to Georgetown. We decided to stop in the historic district to get a snack and see some museums.  Not as easy as it sounds!

On the side of the South Carolina Maritime Museum
It is from the Norwegian ship, Leif Ericson. I think they said it was a steamer.
The museum was free but donations accepted.
It was small but seems to be growing. It had some great wooden ship models.

some of the stuff that was inside. Lon thought the morse code key was the coolest thing ever!

Scars from the big fire.
Three large buildings are gone. The fire happened since we moved here, so it was not that long ago!

The Rice Museum. We were looking forward to seeing this. We have been learning lots about rice!  Sadly at 3pm, they had already closed.
The Gullah museum was closed, as was the Georgetown County museum. The Kaminski house had also closed for the day.
We went in search of a pastry.   There was nothing that looked good to Lon or was open.
We found the Kudzu bakery! WOW.  Lon was able to get a slice of chocolate cake. Really good cake, I got a cheese danish. I wish I had gotten three! It was very good!

Lon thought this was a cool fountain. It drained right into the street

Random gate

A garden at the far end of Harbor Walk.  I can not remember what it is called right now,  I will post it as soon as I can

Same park.  Nice fountain

Kaminski House. The tours were over for the day, but they had a public restroom! The gift shop was nice and warm. The ladies there were very nice to us. Even though we did not buy anything.

Next to the house.

details.

Lon wanted to get a shot of the boats with they oyster processing plant behind them.
so I did.

It was after 4, time to go home. It had warmed up to 41 in Georgetown and by the time we got to Summerville it was 46. Lon was sad that we were not going to have weather cold enough to cancel school in the morning.
Lon and I had lots of fun. We found two places we want to explore on another day trip, The Hobcaw Barony. It is a nature interpretive center and that is all I know about it so far. It has a very cool sounding name.
There is also a plantation house called Hopsewee that sounds like fun. They are closed on Mondays.
Planning our summer trips!