October 3, 2008

Friday 3~~~ Today we took the back roads from our campground to Charleston on the way we stopped at the "Boone hall Plantation". This plantation home has been used for several movies, "The North and the South", "Queene" "The Patriot" and several more. They had a field of cotton growing in the field we drove by heading to the plantation. The old live oak trees line the long driveway with the hanging mossy grass (not moss, but don't know the name of it) draping the large trees. The scene looks like a setting from the movie "Gone With the Wind". (picture) The house tour was very interesting but we weren't allowed to take any pictures inside the home. This home and the slave quarters were all made out of brick, so they were left standing even with the damage from Hurricane Hugo and some major repairs. So many homes in the south were and still are made from bricks, as most of these places made their own bricks with all the sand and clay that is immense here. They gave you a 45 minute trolley ride around the whole plantation to see the farming operation that has been carried out on this plantation for many years and still is. Next we took the house and garden tour and from there we went to one of the slave quarters to listen to a talk on the language of the slaves and the different ways they talked. The slave quarters (pictures) were furnished the way they might have looked during the years they were occupied with slaves. The sand and clay used laying the bricks is full of tiny sea shells in the mortar. The last picture is a picture made with the remains of broken dishes found near the slave quarters when they were doing some excavating.