Day 7 – Charlotte, NC & Charleston, SC

Another day and headed to another city, but first breakfast. I LOVED the citrus french toast. The baked egg also was cooked perfectly.

The game plan was to make it to Charlotte, NC (2 hour drive) around lunch time and stop by the Ostrich Ranch. Well, the website doesn’t say it’s at a house in a neighborhood! I didn’t want to go ring their bell and ask if I could pet their ostrich so we moved on to a spot I picked for lunch.

Lake Norman Motel’s, Landing Restaurant is supposed to have ostrich burgers, and being adventures I wanted to try something new. Well, we get there and it’s closed, yeah they changed their hours to only be open on the weekend until summer. WTC that’s 2 places that where a bust on all the planning I had done. Oh well, on to the next stop.

The next stop was a place I had seen pictures of online and then after a little more research found out it’s The Billy Graham Library. I’m not one of those overly religious people so I was extremely uncomfortable with someone saying things like “praise the lord” after everything they said. All I wanted to do was take some pictures of the outside and move along. Well as the timing was we had to go to the bathroom and D decided he was hungry since my ostrich lunch was a bust.

Inside we had split a BBQ Sandwich $6.25 and chips $1.50. The seating area I thought was cleaver in making it look like stalls in a barn.

After eating we hit the road again and headed towards Charleston, SC (3 1/2 hour drive). We had to hurry to make it to Magnolia Plantation and Gardens (hours: 9am-4:30pm) before they closed. I was so disappointed in going. I think if I went back I would go to Drayton Hall which is the only house that survived for over 273 years. Anyway, Magnolia had a ton of good reviews so we went. $15 per person to get in and $8 for the house tour. The house tour was worth it, the regular admission to walk around not so much. The landscaping wasn’t kept up and all the gardens looked really bad and not kept up like they raved about. We didn’t hardly see any flowers just a few in the Biblical Garden.

The highlight was seeing a peacock by our car as we where leaving.

Then we where off again just down the road to The Inn at Middleton Place. Charleston, SC if you stay In the historic area can be expensive so we opted to stay outside of town near the plantation for the night since we wouldn’t be doing anything in town that evening anyway. Using AAA discount code, I booked the room for $134.10 plus tax. I really loved this place. It’s modern yet still keeps with the log cabin feel inside.

The hotel offers appetizers and cocktails every afternoon so we went to check it out. The appetizers where cheeses and a southwestern eggroll. They did have a variety of wines and beer to pick from.

As the sun started to set we when to go walk around the gardens near the Middleton Plantation. I think the aerial photos on their site is probably going to be better then mine, but you’ll get the idea. There’s a neat butterfly look using two ponds, but be careful they have baby gators in them.

After we wandered around and watched the sunset we headed back to our room for the night.