Hey Everyone!
I see I haven't blogged since January - we have had a lot going on and I am skipping the post with our pictures from the grounds of the Ringling Museum because I'll never get caught up.
We have just returned from our epic trip to Kiawah. Well, Mom and Dad just returned. We beat them by a couple days. Going to Kiawah, we almost missed our connecting flight and had to run through the Atlanta airport, and then they lost our luggage, and then only found Glenn's. (Mine came back the next day).
Additional bad luck included Mom getting pneumonia and going by ambulance to the hospital in Charleston (where they both spent the night) and then having TWO flights canceled on the way home, an additional 2 hotel stays and a $300 cab ride. But hey - WE ALL SURVIVED.
And actually, we had a pretty nice time, minus those details. Here are a million pictures to prove it.
This is where we stayed, the aptly named Windswept Villas. We were right on the beach - past some mangroves.
I noticed that we didn't take any pics inside the place, so here is the AirBnB listing if you want to see. It was a pretty place.
https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/14630839source_impression_id=p3_1648920615_v2uEr1pvCh7dlIbA
Oh actually, I guess Glenn did get a shot of the living room and a shot of the door out onto the porch which was impossible to open - it looked like someone had tried to chisel their way out at some point.
There were lots of deer around (which you will see) and the pictures that follow were all taken within a short walk from our condo.
Glenn played a couple of rounds of disk golf at the nearby Night Heron Park and I walked around and kept him company.
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| Can you see the deer in this pic? (He's closer than you think) |
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| He was not scared of us at all. We had to walk around him. |
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| Peek-a-boo! |
One excursion we went on was to go see the Angel Tree - a giant live oak that's hundreds of years old. Mom and Dad did not care for it - it was down a long, bumpy road and there were lots of tourists there and signs and hub-bub. But we snapped a few pics before they could stop us.
We had to ditch the folks for our next excursion. We wanted to go see dolphins at Captain Sam's Inlet, where the dolphins go strand fishing, which means they chase the fish up onto the sand and strand themselves (temporarily) to catch the fish. We were hoping we could drive there, but were directed to drive to a nearby beach access and then walk a mile and a half down the beach to get to the inlet.
It was far and windy and cold. The beach is extremely wide and empty and it felt like we were walking on the surface of the moon.
This is where the river meets the ocean. We at least saw some dolphins, but none of them hopped out of the water for our entertainment.
We also went to the Sanctuary - the only hotel on the island - and just walked around a bit one day and then came back another evening for dinner at the Jasmine Porch. Here's the view from outside the lobby.
And now, I know you'll be very excited to hear about our trip to the Charleston Tea Gardens. It was actually a fun and interesting visit, but you can't go there anymore because mom drank all their free tea.
We went through their gift shop, did a brief factory tour, and then took a trolley tour of the grounds.
I got a nice mug and we brought home some peach tea, which is quite good. And we are now experts on tea.
While I enjoyed sleeping in a bit, Glenn got some awesome sunrise pics. So here are a bunch of those.
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| Note the deer in the foreground. |
So our last big adventure was a trip to Middleton Plantation. It was a big place - not ideally suited for a wheelchair - and kinda cold, so Mom and Dad stayed through lunch and then they left, and Glenn and I stuck around for a while longer. (No offense, guys, but the sun came out and it warmed up after you left. :-)
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| They had herds of sheep just walking the grounds everywhere. |
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| Here's a picture of mom - we parked her at the top of a hill. :-) |
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| Glenn taking a picture of Dad taking a picture of me. |
Here were some other animals we saw.
Here are some of the old plantation work areas...
Ok and here are a million more pictures from around the grounds in no particular order.
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| This is the Inn at Middleton - very modern architecture for an historic plantation. |
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| I am in this picture. |
Guys, I think that's 132 pics, which feels like enough for now. Anyway, it was a great trip and we were so happy to see mom and dad again after so long, and had lots of laughs. (And now, lots of photos to remember it by).
As I usually do, I shall end this post with puppies.
Love you all!
EDIT: I treat this blog as like my scrapbook so I wanted to remember this story. At one point, Glenn was playing a game on his iPad and Mom asked what he was playing. He said Backgammon, and she said, "Oh, like Chemin de Fer?" And Glenn and I stared at each other blankly and were like, uh-oh, Mom is speaking in tongues or having a seizure or something. And she said, "like James Bond used to play..." I googled this and sure enough - Chemin de Fer is a form of Backgammon. We found this hilarious and for the rest of the trip just randomly shouted out "Chemin de Fer!" just to amuse ourselves.
