Well, howdie. It has been a while since my last post so to make up for it here is an extra long post.
We are making our slow journey home. The boat has behaved itself fairly well except for a broken fan belt on the generator which dear Gary was able to fix. He has been amazing and has fixed the majority of our problems saving us visits into a marina. Hmmm, that means I can make up a "honey-do" list for him when we get home early next week.
We have visited Jeckyll Island, Georgia, Charleston, SC and Magnolia House and Gardens since I last wrote and you can guess which I enjoyed the best. Yes, you are right - Magnolia House and Gardens.
Before I show you photos let me tell you about Jeckyll Island in Georgia. It was home to millionaire cottages in the 1920s and 1930s many of which are now museums. There is also a first class hotel on the island for the prestigious client. It had a croquet pitch and to play you had to wear all white as though you were playing tennis at Wimbledon.

The cottages ranged from the small and quaint to the large and glamorous. Many rich personalities have stayed in some of them and I cannot remember whom at the moment.

The island has one important piece of history and that is in the form of a telephone from where the first trans continental phone call was made on January 25th, 1915.
Instead of walking around the island, we borrowed bicycles from the marina and rode into town. There we caught a tram and had a leisurely ride around the island with the narrator telling us all about the historic houses that we passed. On the back seat in front of us was the smallest of tree frogs. He had hitched a ride and stayed with us for about a mile before hopping off.

From Jeckyll Island our journey took us further north to Charleston, SC where we spent a pleasant couple of days due to the most perfect weather you could wish for.
Again, we took a tram tour of Charleston to see some of the historic sights and homes. Charleston has a very famous fountain in the shape of a pineapple which we had to go and see.

 From the "Battery" area of Charleston you could just see Fort Sumter in the distance noted for two battles of the American Civil War.

Whilst in Charleston we hired an UBER and went to see Magnolia House and Gardens several miles from the outskirts of Charleston. What a wonderful day it turned out to be. We saw gardens, slave homes, plantation house, a swamp, went for a tram ride and a boat ride all in one day.
The 5 historic slave quarters were better than many although very poor by today's standards. One of them was lived in until the the late 1990s. The man and his wife had 13 children in this one small house. He worked on the gardens of the plantation. The structures themselves were constructed in the 1850s. One of them had newspapers on the walls and ceiling to help keep it warm in the cold SC winters.

Magnolia House and Plantation is one of the oldest plantations in the south and sits on the Ashley River.The plantation dates back to 1676 and was under the control of the Dayton family for 15 generations. It was originally a rice plantation (SC's  golden crop because it was worth its weight in gold). Slaves from this plantation developed a creolized Gullah language and culture, retaining many elements from Africa.

As you all probably know, I LOVE gardens and this was no exception. I could have spent 2 days there and not got bored. Now for my photos and I have a lot. Here goes.
The first is a nice reflection I took of Gary in one of the conservatories.

On the boat trip I got some nice photos of alligators.

I am not sure what is on the alligator's back. It maybe moss.
No blog is complete without pictures of birds!!

The above photos are mostly of the Great White Heron. The next few are of the anhinga in flight or drying her wings. She has no oil in her feathers so in order to fly after getting wet she has to dry out her wings.

The next couple of photos are of the Great Blue Heron and her chick.

We went for a walk in the swamp and I took many lovely photos. There were alligators and wood ducks sunning themselves on wooden ramps built especially for that purpose.

Gary spotted a baby turtle. He was probably only 2" in length so how Gary saw him, I do not know.

I spotted the above turtle covered in moss.
We had a bit of a laugh in Charleston. We have to have the septic tank pumped out at least once every week or so. Well, the toilet on a boat is called the head. We saw this mobile pump out boat called "The Grateful Head" which gave us quite a chuckle.

I shall finish with my usual picture of a sunset. There have not been many spectacular sunsets unfortunately.

Well, we are about 5-6 days from home depending on the weather and the behavior of the boat so this may be last blog. I thank-you for taking this journey with us. Be safe and love one another.