St. Peter's Basilica - Columbia

To wrap up the school year and to accompany Jalen's lesson on the Catholic Reformation, we paid a visit to St. Peter's Basilica in Columbia. It's the only basilica in South Carolina and is beautiful. 

We had a very informative, personal guided tour.

Pope John Paul even visited the basilica in 1987.

This chair and prayer rail were built especially for him.

Inside the beautiful basilica.

Baptismal font - there was a time in the 70's when they replaced it with a black marble saucer, but a custodian hid the original font and eventually it was put back in place.

The custodian also saved this beautiful altar with a bas relief of the last supper.

They don't have records of who did the stained glass, but it is beautiful. It is in the Tiffany style, so it's possible it was one of his assistants.

One of the stations of the cross.

View towards the organ.

Can you see the little detail added to the pillar by the same artist that did the ceiling?

How about now?

Confessional

Cemetery

This is truly a magnificent building. I'm surprised we hadn't visited it sooner. 

Riverbanks Zoo May 2024

The last week of school, the Bailey's called to see if Jalen and I wanted to join them for a zoo day. Of course we did! We love our zoo.

Gideon has become very attached to Jalen and Jalen is learning to tolerate him.

We have loved spending Fridays with the Baileys this year.

My favorite part was the baby flamingo. I had never seen a baby flamingo before. He was adorable and was so cute trying to stand on one leg.

The Galapagos tortoises are always fascinating. So huge!!

The meerkats were super active and so cute. I was worried some of them were going to escape their enclosure.

The golden tamarins are always cute.

Lemurs are pretty.

Obligatory orangutan photo.

We caught the koalas at feeding time. Usually they're just asleep, so this was cool.

Never too old for the carousel. Except for me - it makes me nauseous!

Ally and Jalen conquered the rock wall.

Tigers are beautiful.

Feeding the lorikeets is always fun.

Lion pride

The jellyfish are so calming.

We renewed our zoo membership, but this will be the first time in the 14 years we've lived here that we won't have the wristbands to do extra things like ride the carousel, climb the rock wall, or feed the giraffes and lorikeets. It was $100 more and it just didn't seem worth it now that the kids are older. Hopefully we don't regret it.

 

Memorial Day Weekend Camping Trip

We decided we wanted to go camping for Memorial Day. There are beautiful places to camp in the Carolinas, but they fill up quickly. We waited so long that there wasn't much left. We ended up booking a campground that is only about 20 minutes from our house. It wasn't our favorite, but it was really convenient.

Apparently, it used to be a private home that burned down! It was an RV campground that was pretty crowded.

Fortunately, the tent sites are right next to the pond. So if we faced the right direction, it was beautiful.

We had a couple of unexpected visitors. They were VERY noisy at night!

I had the brilliant idea to bring the hammock. That is a must for all future campouts.

We also brought our badminton set. Another must have for the future.

It was crazy hot, but we still built a s'more fire.

We bought the things that turn the flames cool colors. That was fun.

It was so nice to disconnect and get away even for a short time.

My favorite view.

Even Tashi joined in the fun.

We were close enough to home that we decided to go to Church on Sunday and then head back to the campground. Afterwards, we went to Peak for some trail walking. We started at St. Simon's Episcopal Church. I love old buildings.

Then we went to the Palmetto Trail in Peak. We had discovered this spot during COVID. It had been early spring then so it was much greener this time of year.

Old railroad warehouse.

Some people showed us a trail that led to this creepy bus. We hated to think of what kinds of things may have happened here. There was not a good feeling in that spot.

We were happy to return to the beauty of the Palmetto Trail.

We hiked down to the river beneath the bridge.

After our hike, we returned to the campsite for some card playing.

We chose a miserably hot weekend to camp. The first night, all four of us slept in the tent. There wasn't room for the air mattress and it was hard on my old body. 

The second night was even hotter. David and I decided to leave the tent and set up the air mattress under a canopy. It was way more comfortable. It rained a little, but we stayed dry under the canopy.

Deflating the air mattress.

On the way home, Jalen said he spotted a deer. None of the rest of us saw it, so we turned around to look again. We couldn't believe that Jalen saw it from the opposite side of the car and in the back of a parking lot. He is amazing at spotting things like this.

It wasn't the camping trip we had planned, but it was exactly what we needed!