On the road again….

We jetted off last minute to South Carolina last weekend to go visit our friend John and had an absolute blast! John moved back  home a few months ago and Kevin has so missed him. Not many people around here like to hike and camp but John was always getting Kevin out and about in the woods whenever they could sneak off.

We got the chance to meet his twin brother and his wife the week before and she asked us if we wanted to come up for a visit so she wouldn’t have to drive back alone. We jumped at the chance and packed up the fam and got the farm squared away in less than 24 hours!

Their family still owns the old plantation that has been passed down for multiple generations. We pulled an all night driving spree on Friday night and arrived in the wee wee hours of the morning AKA after 4 a.m. We came into our room they had prepared for us and were overwhelmed with the hospitality. Everything was beautifully setup including a private bathroom and a crib for Noah with a changing table. We would have been content staying in that room for the whole weekend so we were a bit overwhelmed when we woke up to this:

Speechless.

Be sure to check out the link at the bottom to the full series of photo’s we took. It’s phenomenally beautiful.

Once we got up and about we had a quick omelet breakfast and visited with John’s sister and his parents, I promptly went back to bed with Noah at their encouragement. Once revived we decided that our day would best be spent eating tasty BBQ and swimming in the warm Atlantic ocean. This was Noah first time to the ocean ever and the first time for me for the Atlantic. We were quite excited.

John had told of about their favorite place to get BBQ and swore it was some of the best in the South. We were hopeful but skeptical due to our previous run in’s with “amazing” food in the South. But John knows good food so we were quite thrilled when our lunch turned out to live up to his promise.

Welcome to Melvin’s BBQ, a tasty little BBQ joint in Charleston that’s been around since 1939. Kevin and I split a platter and we were completely overwhelmed with food.

The meat was delicious and tender. We got the ribs and pulled pork and they serve the sauces right at the table so you can control how much you want which I appreciated. There were two sauces, The Golden Secret and The Southern Red. They were both tasty and I enjoyed mixing them together as well which is probably frowned upon by true connoisseurs.

The macaroni was a disappointment, although we have pretty high expectations of what good macaroni and cheese should taste like. It was dry and needed seasoning. I think next time I will get the baked beans I saw coming out on another guests tray.

But really the most interesting thing had to the these babies. Pancake batter covered onion rings. One little onion ring enveloped in a mass of sweet fried dough. Let’s be honest. This is not an onion ring, it’s dessert. We dunked ours into our Oreo milkshake to the disgust of our dining partners. It was really, really good. Also good in the BBQ sauce, but please don’t try mixing the BBQ and the Oreo….that’s just weird.

After a nap during lunch Noah was ready to hit the beach.

We got all covered up in sunscreen for the first time ever. 

And totally rocked a sunblock mohawk.

And I don’t have the energy to caption all of these photos but you can see that we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Noah did get salty water and maybe sun block in his eyes so he’s got some redness going on but he seemed to enjoy himself regardless.

Scrunchy face!

Daddy snuggles after getting splashed by a big wave.

Sand crack!

The next morning we took a walk around the property. They even have a pond on one side of the path with alligators in it! See right in the middle of the water the little head popping up?

And there again in this one. My Nikon’s battery died and I forgot the charger so we only had the point and shoot so you can’t see them the best. All the ones we saw were fairly small maybe 3-4 feet long but they said that they have had ones as big as 10-12 feet! 

On the other side of the path is the salt marshes, and they are completely filled with mussels and clams.

Pretty amazing clouds.

The tide was out so the pluff mud was visible and it was completely covered in little crabs!

Next time we come for a visit we are going to do a natural foraging day and make dinner from what we can gather up. Does anyone know what these are and if we can eat them? Some kind of succulent like marsh grass of sorts.

We made our way out to the rickety dock where I took this eligible bachelor worthy photo of John  

Noah didn’t quite make it to the dock.

After we got home we headed off to walk around down in the historic neighborhoods of Charleston.

I couldn’t get enough of the gray cement walls with the white windows and black shutters. So classy. The lamp posts down there are amazing too, lots of them actually have gas piped to them so they are live flame.

It also works great with red brick too.

Some amazing window boxes going down here. I love the purple sweet potato vine spilling out of this one.

Circular doubled up porches with overhead fans were very popular with the nice sea breezes that came through the streets.

We got down to the battery and checked out some great historic cannons and lots of plaques with information about the battles fought there.

And snatched a quick family picture before heading back home for a farm lunch.

Noah just couldn’t help himself. Gotta love that this stroller folds so flat that he can snooze in it so comfortably. About this time I was wishing I could join him.

We spent the rest of the afternoon having a wonderful salmon lunch on the plantation and packing up to head home. We are so grateful to our hosts for having us. Thank you so much we had such a great time!

For a full slideshow of all the images we took click on that adorable chunky face below.