Originally, I had planned to drive to South Carolina and tour Rose Hill plantation but Saturday evening I realized that there were two Rose Hill Plantations in South Carolina. One- the original Plantation with a super cool house, sprawling yard and gardens located 3 hours and 40 mins away. Two- Rose Hill Plantation the gated community only 30 mins away. Unfortunately, my maps app had made me believe the gated community was the real deal. Rather than spend our day trying to break into the gated committee pool, we scrapped our plans and decided to tour a house near our hotel instead. 
We loved our Saturday breakfast so much that we repeated it before heading to the Davenport House for the first tour of the day at 10—that is ten o’clock everyday but 12 Sundays - sad. We had to check out by 11 so we wandered around one last time. While wandering we learned that it was free museum day—a bit of luck. We had just enough time to go tour the Telfair House and museum before we checked out of our hotel and headed out of town. The house turn museum was filled with art.
It wasn’t much of a drive to Wormsloe Historic Site, the former planation. Wormsloe has an amazing mile and half driveway lined with southern oaks. It was so incredible (not worth the 20$ fee to drive down it but still pretty amazing). I naively hoped to find gaters there as well, but our little trail walk didn’t lead to any animals. So we hit the road headed to an animal refuge nearby where I read you could see gaters—I didn’t read that it was closed on Sunday.
The day was definitely not off to a great start, so we moved on to plan C and drove to Pinckney Island National Wildlife Refuge in South Carolina, while listening to stake conference. Hopefully we would find gaters and if not, Natali would at least get a new state. Conference ended just as we arrived. It was hot, humid, very sunny, and Natali was at the peak of her illness discomfort. Her determination won the day and she walked a mile to Ibis Pond and on our way we saw a little baby alligator and around the bend in the pond we found her mother and a ton of amazing birds. They were making so much noise; it was truly amazing. It energized Natali to walk on another half mile to Star Pond but that was all she could handle. We were both sweaty and hot, but happy to have met our goal; a gater and a new state.
We drove back to Savannah to the airport, returned our rental car and emptied what was left in our water bottles on our feet before going through security. It felt good to have clean feet on the long flight home.
Natali was worried about being sick on the way home but luckily her mask and sitting by the window hide her illness and we made it home without incident. She slept nearly all day the next day and still took a few more days to fight that cold off but it was worth the amazing trip together.
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