Travels in the heartland — Part 1

It seems ages since I have written at OD, and for me it has been. But I finally went on that years-in-the-making/hoping road trip that took me to four states and back in a big “blue highways” loop. I accomplished almost all that I wanted to see and do, and wrote in my notebook each morning about the previous day’s travels. It was a fantastic, truly memorable and unforgettable trip. Here is the first installment.

May 23 — Foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains

6:30 am

The sun is rising at the bed and breakfast where I am staying on the first night of my first road trip in years. It’s the only B&B I’ve ever stayed at, a place I’ve known about for several years and always wanted to visit.

I’ve just pulled up the shades in my second floor bedroom in a restored, 100-year-old Victorian farm house on 10 acres. And yes, it has a magnificent wrap-around porch with rocking chairs and hanging baskets of geraniums overlooking flower gardens and bird feeders. It is truly idyllic. I must be dreaming.

The sun is coming up on the mountains about 15 miles in the distance, a pink glow. Roosters are crowing (is this place for real?), and now I hear birds coming awake to the new day.

Yesterday, I started out from Sumter, car loaded and head brimming with plans and ideas for places to visit in Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky and Indiana. I’m hoping I get as far as Indiana. It’s great fun to pore over maps and guidebooks, charting a course over mountains, with planned stops at waterfalls, museums, and little towns with main streets meant for window shopping.

After leaving the busy metropolis of Columbia, I gratefully exited the interstate onto a main highway parallelling it, which was empty. Literally. Just a few cars passed me for miles. I remembered that beautiful, slightly rolling countryside from the early 70s when I first moved to Columbia and went exploring the backroads in those parts with my friends Ralph and Eddie. When I arrived in Pomaria, I had to drive around the tiny downtown with its half dozen brick commercial buildings. I saw the same one I took a picture of Eddie in front of 28 years ago. It was like being in a time warp. Nothing had changed.

Down more rolling highways to the Rose Hill State Park, which was closed, and then on to Croft State Natural Area south of Spartanburg where I stopped for awhile for a snack under one of the largest white oak trees I’ve ever seen. It must have been 150-200 years old. Absolutely magnificent. What a grand tree.

Spartanburg is one of South Carolina’s four largest cities, but amazingly, in all the years I’ve lived in the state, I’ve never seen it before. I drove thorugh town and parked near Main Street to do some walking downtown. As usual, it was not crowded, as is characteristic of most small to medium sized city business districts, but there’s been a lot of revitalization, and the placed looked like it was well on the way to becoming vibrant once again.

I visited an historical museum and spoke awile with the two women who worked there. There was a fascinating exhibit on Camp Wadsworth, a huge training facility for soldiers preparing to fight in France during World War I. It rapidly grew into a immense training center. It was sobering to see pictures of the trenches used to get soldiers accustomed to trench warfare, as well as prepared for gas attacks.

Spartanburg grew rapidly as a cotton distribution point, and as a significant city for the burgeoning textile industry in South Carolina.

Earlier in the day, I had stopped at a much smaller textile community, the mill town of Whitmire. I had to pull off the main highway and drive around the center of town and along a few nearby streets. While there, I picked up a copy of the local paper, The Whitmire News. The main headline read, “Mayor, councilman, recreation director have heated exchange: Chief of Police in executive session for more than one hour.” I had to smile at this. Anyone who has spent years working at small weekly newspapers and has covered town council meetings, would understand my feelings of having seen all that before. What memories that paper brought back of life in the world of small town journalism!

In every town I visit, I can’t help pick up a copy of the local paper, which I usually pore over in my motel room that night in addition to all the brochures, maps, books and booklets accumulated during the day’s traveling.

In the foothills town of Landrum, about a half hour from Spartanburg, I turned off the main highway and crossed over railroad tracks and found myself fortuitously right in front of the local newspaper office. I walked in the front door and immediately noticed the timeless smell of newsprint and ink, the same as in every other newspaper office where I’ve worked over the ears.

It so happened that the Landrum Cardinals had just won the Class 1-A baseball state championship, and this was BIG news, as evidenced by the huge 70 point headline on Page 1 and a special section with color photos of all the players. People were excitedly talking about it at the front desk when I came in, just hours after the paper had been printed.

Landrum is a rather quaint place, right up next to the North Carolina/South Carolina border. Its main street is full of antique shops, something you see increasingly in small-town America where the business folk are trying to revive downtowns.

The highlight of the afternoon was a visit to Table Rock State Park, about an hour’s drive from Landrum on S.C. 11, the Cherokee Hills Scenic Highway. I hadn’t visited this park since the spring of 1984, but it all came back to me: the steep entrance road which climbed past blooming mountain laurel to an overlook facing Table Rock, awesome with its bald granite face. It’s actually a monodnock, like Stone Mountain in Georgia, except not as pronounced or bare.

Then, to the park where I hiked briefly up the trail along Carrick Creek. How glorious to hear the sound of a stream rushing over rocks and creating small waterfalls! The woods were lovely as late afternoon sunshine filtered through the canopy of trees on slopes rising up from the creek. I sat a while on smooth flat stones in the creek, mesmerized by the gentle sounds of that flowing water.

Before leaving the park, I sat on a picnic bench overlooking the swimming area at Pinnacle Lake. Hardly a sound, and a cool breeze letting me drift off in reveries of summer vacations past.

When I arrived at the bed and breakfast, it took me just moments to feel at home, sitting on the porch rocking and watching the birds. I had a long talk with the innkeeper on the porch, a delightful and fascinating woman who completed a career in advertising and decided to fulfill a dream of opening a bed and breakfast in an old farmhouse down South. She could not have picked a more perfect site. She also has ten acres of property and a small menagerie consisting of two rescued miniature horses, who were abaondoned in a rocky pasture five years ago, two llamas, two miniature goats (didn’t know they had those), a potbellied pig (FiM, I know what you mean, now), and a dog and cat.

I sat talking and rocking on the porch until after sunset. It’s been real cool, so I needed my sweatshirt jacket. How nice it was. And what a great way to start my