Boone Hall Plantation: Mount Pleasant, SC

This December we've returned to Mount Pleasant, SC to visit with family for the holidays. We're staying at the KOA, which has made some improvements since we stayed two years ago, most importanly (to us) a new dog park.  Although we've done lots of sightseeing in Mount Pleasant/Charleston in previous years, we never got to Boone Hall Plantation, one of the most popular historic destinations in the area.

The 88 live oak lined entrance to Boone Hall

The admission fee to Boone Hall covers a guided house tour, tram tour, self-guided walking tour of grounds, gardens, cotton dock and slave quarters, butterfly garden and access to the Butterfly Cafe. It easily takes at least half a day.

As we drove down the 88 tree, 3/4 mile live oak lined entrance road, we stopped  to take a picture and noted that we were standing on an old brick bridge over an unusually deep canal. Later we learned that the canal was dug during the Civil War as an effort to detain the advance of Union troops into Charleston. We also learned that the bricks had been made right at Boone Hall Plantation brickyard. 

If you love history, you'll love visiting Boone Hall. Originally a British land grant to John Boone in 1681, it has been a working plantation ever since! It's ownership has changed many times, from John Boone, to a Russian prince, to the current McRae family and others. 

The plantation house and serpentine wall

Its source of income has also changed many times: from rice, cotton, bricks and pecans to peaches, vegetables, tourism and special events.  No cotton any more due to the infestation of the boll weevil along the coast.

As we waited for the noon house tour we walked through the gardens, which were being changed over to their winter annuals. 

However, beautiful pink and white camellia bushes, unique to these semi-tropical climes, were blooming along the garden paths.  

We had just enough time to wander along the creek and visit the smokehouse.  At 250 years, the smokehouse is one of the oldest structures on the plantation.

Praise house and serpentine wall

After walking along the serpentine wall (invented by Thomas Jefferson) we headed back to the big house for the tour.

Our tour guide was entertaining and informative as she took us through the downstairs of the period antique furnished house, where no pictures were allowed. They were in the process of decorating for Christmas with hundreds of poinsettias and a couple of trees in every room, each one decorated uniquely. One was decorated completely with cotton balls right off the bush (surprisingly effective) and another with woven sweet grass ornaments.  This house is not the original Boone home; it is actually the fourth building on the site, the others having been lost to fire and or torn down for this new structure by Thomas Stone in the early 20th century designed after the traditional southern plantation style.

After the tour we made our way back to the row of brick slave cabins along the oak avenue. Typically the slave houses are placed in back where visiting guests wouldn't see them, but historians guess that this land was the only acreage on the plantation that was not farmable because it flooded regularly with salt water. So they built the slave cabins there. 

Each of about eight cabins has a display inside with either an audio or visual recording explaining the display. The first house was described as the "praise house" where slaves were allowed to worship separately from their white owners and overseers.   Music, audio description, mannequins and informative plaques explained the history of worship tradition among the slaves, as well as notable spiritual leaders of the time. Other cabins housed displays about dimensions of slave life, emancipation, archeology, agriculture, etc.

Sweet grass baskets are still a highly prized traditional craft of the local Gullah people and are sold along Rt. 17 in Mount Pleasant. Here too a local artisan sells her baskets and explains about the art form.

Sweet grass basket detail

A local historian was available to answer questions and expound on topics of his choosing outside  one of the cabins. 

These houses are not in their original condition, as they were destroyed by Hurricane Hugo in 1989. They are constructed of the same bricks, which were made in the plantation brickyard. The tile roofs replaced the original wood. 

Another building on the plantation that was seriously damaged by Hurricane Hugo is the cotton gin. As most readers will know, the cotton gin (short for engine) revolutionized cotton production by providing a fast and efficient method of processing the cotton after picking. The large buildings that house the gin are also called gins. There are still many modern gins in operation throughout the south.  This gin had been used as a gift shop and restaurant until the hurricane almost destroyed it. Now it is braced and waiting for a planned multi-million dollar renovation.

We finished our visit with a chilly open air tram tour around agricultural fields of the plantation. Our guide told us more about the history and current use of the plantation. We drove through peach orchards and strawberry fields (that will be ripe in two weeks!). Produce from the farm is sold locally to agricultural cooperatives.

As Christmas approaches our family activities intensify. We'll be visiting, dining out, shopping, having meals at one another's homes, baking cookings, and dancing. There's a nice contradance in North Charleston and one of our nieces is an avid ballroom dancer. We've promised to attend her dance if she'll attend ours, so we anticipate even more dancing and holiday fun.

New England Contra Dance: Peterborough, NH

OK, here it is: a piece of real New England. The contra dance. Readers may recall that Rick and I try to find contra dances wherever we go, but contra dance originated in New England, and the tradition remains the strongest here. One of the most beautiful dance halls in the country is in the Town House of Peterborough, NH.  Town meeting houses are another NE tradition - a multi purpose building in the center of town, used mostly as church and meeting house. In some towns contra dances are held there as well.

The musicians for the evening were Jeremiah McLane and Ethan Hazzard-Watkins. We were familiar with Jeremiah MaClane from one of his earlier albums that we listen to a lot: Smile When You're Ready. One of the things that makes contra dancing so wonderful is the traditional live music, that often builds to a driving beat that keeps the dancing strong and exciting.

Even though there were only two of them, they created a hall full of good music and happy dancers. 

Peterborough has this great balcony at one end of the hall; a nice place to take a break, although it gets pretty hot in the summer.

The floor is particularly smooth and the dancers are particularly good. Many, like us, have been dancing for decades. The bouncy and bold youngsters (of which there were a few) may find us kind of a drag, but experienced and calm dancers create a cohesive flow to the dance that we have missed as we travel and visit other dances.   

Ahhh, it felt good to be back.

The biggest excitement of the evening though was a close encounter with a HUGE bull moose on the road back to The Greenfield Inn Bed and Breakfast, in Greenfield, NH.  He was just mozying along in the dark, crossing the road,  heedless of us. We missed his nose by just a few feet as he eased toward the center line and we swerved by him on the right. Lucky for all of us. 

Greenfield is a very small and quaint town, with quite a few stone walls and classic old NE homes, both large...

and small. Typically the houses are clapboard and painted white, and many have L's that house the kitchens, and barns nearby. Many older ones are cape style (below), some are saltboxes, and I don't know the architectural style of the others, like the one above.

In the center of town is a cemetery...

and a town meeting house, like in Peterborough, only not as grand. This one is the oldest original and continuously used town house in New Hampshire, built in 1795. This one is actually much more typical, as there are many very small towns with small churches/town meeting houses like this one. Peterborough's is unusually grand.

Well, I think this about does it for New Hampshire. In a couple of days we'll be heading back to Vermont to pick up sweet Kona, and to Massachusetts to pick up our home. Although it has been really nice to have a vacation (the overnight at the Greenfield Inn) from our vacation (three weeks at the Nordic Inn in Lincoln) from our vacation (RV full timing), we are looking forward to being "home"  again. Home, by the way, will be in our RV in Brattleboro, Vermont for the next month. See you there.

Knoxville, TN Contra Dance

We found a contra dance in Knoxville! We've been twice already and we think it's a good dance. That means a few things. First, there's good live music. Second, there are good callers. And third, there are enough experienced dancers to get the dance moving. Most contra dances are very welcoming to new-comers, as they want their dance community to grow. However, if there isn't a critical mass of experienced dancers, the dances flounder, or have no flow. So this little community dance has all three. Lucky us.

It also has a unique, but not unheard of feature of a balcony above the dance hall, so I was able to take some cool photos.  I've been experimenting with shutter speed to get that blurred look in waterfalls (more of that soon), so I tried the same setting on dancers.  I like the effect; it captures the sense of movement, which is what it's all about.

The dance hall is an old church.  I think it also serves as a community theatre. Here you can see the old stained glass windows at the end of the hall. Usually the band would be there, but in this case they are on the stage at the side. You get used to it. The couples are doing a do-si-do here. As you can see, contra dances are casual affairs. No fancy outfits needed.

The band, Attic Rattlers, had a more traditional southern Appalachian flavor than we usually hear at contra dances, and we both liked it a lot. They were very lively.

Here are a few shots of Rick dancing. He's the blur in the red T-shirt. The couple standing against the wall is "out." You know how square dances progress around and around the square? In contra dance, couples progress down the line, or the hall, until they get to the end, then they are out for one round of the dance  (64 counts) until the next couple is out. They are watching two couples circle "hands four" to the left - a typical figure.

Here Rick is swinging his partner.  Swinging is what most folks consider the high point of the dance.  The etiquette is to change partners after each dance. But within the dance as well, you are constantly dancing with other partners for a figure or two, like" swing your neighbor." So all the dances are essentially mixers - a real plus for meeting people and building community. 

We'll have one more Monday night at the Knoxville dance before we leave, after Memorial Day weekend.  In addition to dancing, we've had a few hikes and a very special drive that I'll be posting about soon.  

Finally Dancing!

One of our intentions, the one that inspired the name of this blog, was to find contra dances across the country as we traveled. (See the page in the right hand column of the blog if you're unfamiliar with contra dancing.) Well, in reality they have been few and far between. As hard as it is for us to believe, there are not contra dances everywhere!  Dancing was especially dry in Montana, South Dakota and Utah. Many dances also take the summer off.

So, down in Southern California we finally started to run into some dances again. We found one in Brentwood, near LA, and then another in San Diego. Now, up here in and around San Francisco there is a thriving contra dance community. On Saturday night we danced in Palo Alto, with caller Jean Corrindo and dynamic music by the Rosin Doctors.

Then on Sunday afternoon we attended a lively dance in Hayward with Susan Kendig (from Portland, OR) calling and Triangularity (from Seattle) providing the music. Great crowd, friendly people and quite a feast of snacks at the break. Thanks to Michael and Lenore (yes, the first one I've ever met at a contra dance) for your welcomes and wealth of information about local dances up the west coast.

As we head north through California and on to the coasts of Oregon and Washington we expect to run into more dances along the way, especially in Portland and Seattle. So we are really dancing across the country now. Or maybe up the county.