Charleston is our second home. 

It's where we went to school, grew into ourselves (at least a little bit), and made lifelong best friends. It's also where we met. 

But, as is often the case when you live somewhere, we had never done the touristy things that many consider synonymous with Charleston. 

To train for the sightseeing and touristing we’d be doing abroad, we decided to check two off the list: the Angel Oak tree and Magnolia Plantation. 

The Angel Oak is one of many native live oak trees found throughout the state. It's famous because it is believed to be in excess of 1,500 years old. While it's not very tall, it has a massive canopy. The wide spread, draping limbs seem to have grown out instead of up, making for very intriguing photos. 

I did a bit of research and some have reported that the Angel Oak is the oldest thing, living or man-made, east of the Rocky Mountains. The tree got its celestial name from its previous owners, Martha and Justin Angel.

Plantations are as engrained in the history and landscape of the American south as Spanish moss, a truth evident in South Carolina. While many of the old rice plantations have been nonoperational for quite some time, they still offer historical tours as well as a gorgeous setting for weddings and other events.

We visited Magnolia Plantation, about 25 minutes driving from downtown Charleston, and experienced the south as it was hundreds of years ago - quieter, overgrown with old trees covered in ivy and moss, with alligators peeking out of the water, covered in bright green globs of duckweed. 

As we walked along the boardwalked paths that weave and wind through Magnolia's grounds and the Audubon Swamp, we were surprised by how much wildlife we saw. Though they had all lived within miles of us for years, we had never given much thought to the plethora of spiders, alligators, turtles and waterfowl living peacefully in the time capsule that is Magnolia Plantation.