Trask Avenue

Several weeks ago the lovely Ms. Trask and I took a short holiday 700+ miles due south to the Palmetto State, South Carolina. The palmetto is South Carolina’s state tree and it looks like, as you might imagine, a palm tree. Seeing palm trees in what, to the mild November eye, appeared to be a decidedly non-tropical environment is an odd, though not unpleasant site. The images the uninitiated have of South Carolina may include plantations, shrimpers, marshlands, beaches, and estuaries. Thoughts about trees may include grand old growths like black oak, southern magnolia and Spanish moss draping sleepy avenues in sheltering shade. But palm trees thrusting you into some weird alternate Hawaiian world? Not so much. Yet there they sat reinforcing the everlasting truth that we know far far less than we think we do. Thankfully, this sobering dose of reality was tempered by the good news the palmettos are surely pretty.

See? A southern style home, what with its balconies and porches and whatnot, being flanked by something out of South Pacific is frickin’ weird.

Aside from the palmettos our days were filled with jaunts to the beach, strolls through lovely downtown Charleston (especially the residential neighborhood known to locals as “South of Broad”), an extended stop at Boone Hall Plantation (Where Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively got married in September. Admit it. Now you’re jealous.), a boat ride to visit Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, bridge walks, and lots of good, southern cooking. Some of this stuff is shown below. The remainder sits in my memory, a decidedly leaky place to call home.

Yep, think Tinseltown nuptials only without the tinsel or the town. Boone Hall is pretty and blah blah blah, yet it is fascinating to wonder what prompted two Hollywood stars with the means to marry anywhere in the world to pick this specific place. And they didn’t even tie the knot in the main house. Legend has it they did it on a dinky little pier overlooking the Boone Hall Creek. Apparently, mosquito netting was all the fashion.

We had a strange fascination with the Arthur Ravenel Bridge which spans the Cooper River between Charleston and Mt. Pleasant. We walked it, we oohed and ahhed whenever we saw or drove over it, and we photographed the holy hell out of it. It opened in 2005 with an expected life of 100 years. So y’all have about 93 years left to go see it for yourself and fall under its mystical and freakish spell.

A random dad with a random daughter enjoying a nice late afternoon on the beach at Isle of Palms. To clarify: I am quite certain the random daughter was not random to the random dad. And vice-versa.

Downtown Charleston with its stunning homes, southern charm and yes, out of place palmettos, sits in the distance. The sailboat looked like fun. Puzzlingly enough, the Captain never invited us for a spin around the harbor. Maybe next time it would be helpful if we met him. Or her.

Note: I wanted to display the photos in a larger format, but the “large” option blows them past the parameters of the page. I could go in and manually massage the dimensions in the HTML, but seriously? So if you would like to see the photos as I wished they were displayed – and how could you not – just click directly on them. Yes, that is your hint to go do that. Now.