Day 3 we decided to start with just having a breakfast bar in the room. After breakfast we headed to John’s Island to see the Angel Oak Tree. We followed the google map directions to get there and ended up having to drive down a dirt road to get to the tree. The tree was massive. Some of the branches have gotten so heavy over the years that they have had to prop them up. There was an artist out by the tree that was doing a painting of the tree and he had some historical pictures. He said that they have never cut any branches off the tree. I’m not doubting him, but I saw a spot that appeared to be where a limb had been sawed off. I am a loggers daughter and that is what it looked like to me. LOL!! He said that they have lost a couple in hurricanes. So maybe it had to be sawed off after a hurricane.
After visiting here we went to a shoe pop up shop!! LOL! It kept coming up as an ad on my Facebook so we stopped in and we each found shoes. We had lunch at the Tattooed Moose. We found this on the Diners, Drive-ins and Dives page. But we ended up not at the location that Guy had visited. I had chicken salad and duck fries and Jeff had a grilled cheese and street corn.
After lunch we drove across town to Cypress Gardens. To get there we drove thru the Navy base. There is a public road that goes right thru the middle. You see entrances to the base on your left and right. There have been several movies and television shows filmed at the gardens. The Notebook is probably the only one I’ve seen. The lake has the iconic bridge scene, but I wasn’t getting in a boat to see it.
We started with a visit to the Butterfly House and then the Swamparium. I thought I had seen that they had another building that held the snakes. NOPE!! We rounded a corner and there were the snakes. I DON’T DO SNAKES!! I don’t look at them in pictures, I don’t look at them in person and yet there they were! I hid my face in Jeff’s back and told him to just keep walking. He did a side step and I told him no sudden moves just get me to the door. He said that in all these years he has never seen that side of me. There’s still firsts in our lives. LOL!! Whew!! We made it back out and I ccould breathe again.
We walked around the gardens and then headed back to the lake area. This area looked kinda swampy and there were signs that alligators could cross the path. I wasn’t getting in a boat in that swampy water and Jeff didn’t want to take the walking path. I told him I was walking the path if I had to do it by myself. He opted to go with me, but now it was his time to be scared. We saw butterflies, birds, wood ducks and an egret from the path but thankfully no gators!
By the time we finished at the gardens it was late and we headed back to the hotel. For dinner we turned to Yelp and decided to grab a slice of pizza from Pizzeria Di Giovanni. The pizza slice was gigantic. After dinner we stopped in at Kaminsky’s for dessert. We both got milkshakes and I ordered a brownie. They actually fixed us 2 brownies and our server gave us one of them for free since it was a mistake by the dessert makers.
