Trip to Atlanta and South Carolina

Hi All,
Last weekend Susan and her girlfriends had a "girls weekend" planned. Hurricane Irma adjusted their plans a bit. They were going to spend the weekend at a house in Folly Beach, unfortunately that house was under water. Just as we were leaving Texas the plan changed.  They decided to help one of the friends clean up a bunch of downed limbs from Irma on their property in SC. I was going to be loading stuff from Susan's barn in Atlanta to bring back to Texas while the girls had their weekend. With the change of plans I got invited instead!

The property is in what is known as ACE Basin in South Carolina. ACE Basin is the basin of the Ashepoo, Combahee and Edisto rivers, one of the largest undeveloped estuaries along the Atlantic Coast of the United States according to Wikipedia. This particular property is special because parts of the movie Forrest Gump were filmed there. In fact the pecan grove in front of Forrest's house is where we spent the weekend picking up and burning downed limbs.

Run Forrest, Run!

The "Jenny Tree"

We still had a bunch of stuff we wanted to bring back from Atlanta so we spent Sunday evening and Monday morning loading up the trailer with "stuff". Thanks to Mark for helping us get the wood stove loaded.

Let me tell you a story about a man named Jed...

That's it for now. Take care.
Brian

Chapter 3 - 40 acres and no mule

Hi All,
I had several people ask that we continue with the blog and report on what we're doing with the land. So here's Chapter 3, 40 acres (actually 39.93) and no mule (but we did get a Polaris Ranger).

The 40 acres. Here's an aerial photo of our property, outlined in red.

It kinda looks like a gun pointing down. In the barrel (lower left corner) is where the current house is located. The open pasture to the left is Texas A&M AgriLife Research land. The dark triangle looking thing towards the top of our property is a lake / pond.

No mule, but a Polaris Ranger. We bought this while we were in Cody, Wyoming and used uship to get it back to Texas.

In my last post I mentioned we were trying to figure out whether to renovate the house built in 1930 or bulldoze it down. We still haven't decided what to do. One day we want to keep it, the next we want to burn it to the ground. I have a few pictures but they are all of the outside. The inside is so disgusting we wouldn't want anyone to see it. So far we've pulled most of the carpet out so at least you can walk in without losing your lunch.

Looks pretty rough

Well, it could be cute

Maybe too much work

If we just got the tree limb off the roof...

Who knows what we'll decide to do with it. Our purchase decision was all about the land, the house wasn't even a consideration.

Just how thick are the woods?

The word "impenetrable" comes to mind

There are a few places you can get a peek at the lake

Have you ever heard of a forestry mulcher? What a cool machine! We hired a company to mulch around the property line so we could at least know where the property lines are. These machines literally eat trees. A thirty foot tree becomes mulch in a minute or two. They are amazing to watch. Because the woods are so thick I couldn't get in front of them to show them eating an entire tree but here's a few seconds of one doing some "clean up".

And here's what they leave in their wake.

Once again, Duncan has to get in the picture.

That's it for now. Take care.

Brian