Smiths tour Southern states
Forrest and Joyce Smith, accompanied by others, recently returned from a 16-day tour through southern states and along the Carolina coastlines.
Traveling east toward the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina, they visited the Biltmore mansion and gardens located near Asheville, N.C. They had a tour of a tobacco farm at Greenville showing how tobacco is planted, tended, and harvested.
Reaching the Outer Banks, they visited the Fort Raleigh national historic site. The site covers 143 acres on Roanoke Island where, in 1585, Sir Walter Raleigh attempted the first English colony.
They also visited the Bodie Island lighthouse, Wright Brothers national memorial near Kitty Hawk, Elizabethan Gardens, Cape Hatteras national seashore and Cape Hatteras lighthouse.
The group traveled by ferry to Ocracoke Island and visited the Ocracoke lighthouse. Ocracoke is noted for its fishing and bird watching. Ferrying from the Ocracoke island to Cedar Island, they toured Beaufort, a seashore town established in the early 1700s. Its historic district is comprised of narrow streets and old houses.
Driving on to Wilmington, they toured the Battleship North Carolina, then on to Myrtle Beach where they spent the night before driving by the ocean to tour Brookgreen Gardens.
After taking a sightseeing cruise through Charleston's harbor to Ft. Sumter, they visited Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum and toured the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown.
Middleton Place, oldest landscaped gardens in America were visited next. They were started in 1741 by Henry Middleton. They then visited the Magnolia plantation and gardens near Charleston, S.C. The 500-acre estate was acquired in 1676 by the Drayton family, whose heirs still own and manage it. The 60-acre garden, one of America's oldest, dates from around 1680 and contains 900 varieties of camellias, 250 types of azaleas, and hundreds of other flowering species which provide year-round color.
There were guided tours of historic Charleston, Beaufort, and Hilton Head Island.
Traveling down the coast to Georgia, they had guided tours of Savannah and Macon, Ga., and visiting and touring the Callaway Gardens located near Pine Mountain, Ga., in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Founded by industrialist Cason J. Callaway in the 1930s, the area features horticultural displays and miles of scenic woodland drives. The gardens cover 14,000 acres and contain 13 lakes and 13 miles of drive-through gardens and arboretums.
Visited next was Warms Springs, Ga., where the group toured the Little White House built by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Continuing on to Atlanta they had a guided tour of the capital, visited the cyclorama in the Civil War Museum depicting the Battle of Atlanta, visited the World of Coca-Cola, and had a guided tour of the CNN studio at CNN headquarters.
On the way home, they stopped and toured the U.S. Space and Rocket Center at Huntsville, Ala., then went on to Memphis, Tenn., where they had lunch on Beale Street, then visited Mud Island Park built on a 52-acre island in the Mississippi River.
The last overnight stop was at Little Rock, Ark.
