Charleston, Charleston, ba, ba, da, ba, ba, dum....

Welcome to Charleston, South Carolina. Have you been? Amazing. It was so quaint and southern that it made me want to put on my parasol and hoop skirt and sip my mint julip on the big front porch. Downtown there was house after house painted bright colors with immaculate gardens. I was trying desperately to peek through the wrought iron gates to get a glimpse of their secret gardens covered in palmetto trees, topiary magnolias and blooming jasmine crawling vines. There were giant live oaks covered in Spanish moss making it look almost enchanted and providing plenty of shade. We visited a plantation, ate at a few restaurants and tried to just soak it all in.

On the way there, we stopped at this tacky of all tacky places called South of the Border. The freeway alone had 53 billboard advertisements leading up to it (I counted), so at the last minute we swerved off the freeway to find out what this was all about. The history of this place goes like this....the man started his business from a hot dog stand and then just started adding on, restaurants, ice cream, firework store (we now own some black cats so beware), Africa store, flamingo store, and a few rides. Picture a bunch of random things plopped just south of the border from North Carolina. The waitress admitted it was a tourist trap. Is that why we pulled off the road? Twice? Once on the way there and once on the way back. We just had to put our rumps on a few more animals and pose. We watched an amazing sunset fall just behind the South of the Border sign and it was then I knew that it was our destiny to go there. We went from classy to chintzy in a matter of miles.

Thank you Bob and Andrea for coming along on this southern trip. We just try to catalog all these wonderful memories and just hope we don't get old and senile and forget them.