So, we went to South Carolina last week. That makes 25 states that we've BOTH been to. We still have to revisit any states that one or the other hasn't been to. On the way there I had to entertain Madeline by drawing her favorite story-The Sorcerer's Apprentice. She was interested but confused to see the characters drawn out on paper. She played with it for a good long time. We stayed in a little hotel/condo for a week and only paid $180 for the week-super cheap for a great room.

The first day was warmish (upper 60s) so we went to the beach and were the only crazies in the outdoor pool and lazy river. It was chilly for sure, but we had fun. The next few days got colder and we went to a children's museum, some local restaurants (Myrtle Beach is fine for seafood, not so great for BBQ), swam in the indoor pool every day, went to Georgetown SC, and went to a really beautiful botanical garden that was FULL of sculpture by Americans. The garden was so cool that we went there 2 days. At an activity called "meet the animals" we met a de-stinked skunk, some snakes, a couple of turtles, and a toad. It was pretty neat, and Madeline talked about it a lot afterwards. The next day we visited the zoo at the garden. It only has animals native to the area. We saw hawks, eagles, owls of different kinds, otters (which were really interactive!), foxes (which, we learned from the zookeeper, smell like skunks when they, um, use the restroom), geese, wild turkeys, swans, bulls, chickens, horses, pigs, sheep, and gray squirrels. It was a fun experience because we actually never see any of these animals at the Nashville zoo, so they seemed really exotic to us!

On the way back we drove through the mountains in North Carolina. We stopped at a hole-in-the-wall Appalachian-style BBQ restaurant. The door said "Bikers Welcome" and the inside was decorated with puzzles on the walls and hundreds of pig stuffed animals and figurines. We wanted something authentic, and this place was perfect. The food was super smokey and they had a really interesting BBQ sauce - very runny with more vinegar and spice and less sugar and tomato. We also had fried green tomatoes and hush puppies. We feel like by now we've pretty much tried all of the southern foods that we wanted to try before we leave the south. Smoked ribs (Memphis style) are the best of all.

Right before entering the Smoky Mountain National Park, we drove through a Cherokee Indian Reservation. While we were passing by a casino we noticed Old Mormon Church Road. Crazy, huh? We had to take a picture of the road sign with Cherokee writing.

Now we're back in Nashville for 10 more weeks. It was a nice last spring break-that seems so weird to say!