Even though I haven’t been able to finish my explorations of the Tobacco Trail, I haven’t been sitting idle. Once the rain stopped we had some spectacular weather, and I decided to get out and about. I hit a few spots in the upstate, so this is sort of a miscellany wrap-up of the week. This is part one of about a three-parter. This first part actually took place last week, before the deluge…
Year: 2015
It’s as I feared. The floodwaters that inundated Columbia are now washing downstream. The image above is of Highway 301 between Manning and Turbeville, the very area I explored a couple of weeks ago. This image was posted on Facebook by John McLeod, a Manning Resident. He also posted this image just northeast of the … Read More “Tobacco Trail Flooding” »
The photos from Columbia have been astounding. The level of flooding is beyond anything we might have imagined. I have close friends that have been directly affected by the flooding, and getting back to normal will take months.
Here in Greenville we got lots of rain, and there had been some localized flooding, but nothing to the scale of the mid-state. Our area is almost back to normal.
Normally I don’t review restaurant chains. I prefer locally-owned places, those restaurants and cafes that are unique to a particular community. I decided to make an exception for The Lost Cajun for a couple of reasons. First, there is a dearth of Cajun food in our area. Secondly, this is the first foray into our area by this chain. Since it was a rainy Monday, I decided that it would be a perfect opportunity to check out this place.
There’s a reason I named this blog RandomConnections. The URL RandomThoughts was taken…but that’s beside the point. Time and time again the idea of “random connections” has proved itself to be the more appropriate title, as tenuous threads appear that seem to bind disparate ideas together. Such was the case this past week.
I got a forwarded e-mail from my brother, Stephen, with a note that a historical convoy would be passing through our area. The convoy would feature vintage military vehicles, and I thought it would be a cool photo opportunity. Little did I realize how closely this event would tie right into my recent research and explorations.
Read More “Spirit of 45 Military Vehicles on the Bankhead Highway” »
It had been a long day. I had gotten up early and driven down to Orangeburg, then followed the Tobacco Trail along US Highway 301 through Orangeburg and Clarendon Counties. I had crossed over into Florence County into the town of Olanta. I thought about pushing on to the town of Florence, but when I checked my GPS I saw that it was going to take several hours to get home as it was, so it was time to head back. Even so, I made a couple of stops and detours. These were interesting sights worthy of documentation, but I didn’t think they fit with the Tobacco Trail narrative.
I do my homework before I go out on these extended photo expeditions. I like to know what’s in an area so that I make sure I can get to my intended target. Sure, I miss things. There were lots of things I had to skip on this particular trek. Sometimes I find too much, and those extra places of interest become distractions from my intended target. Sometimes, though, things work out perfectly, as was the case with lunch at the Chat n’ Chew in Turbeville on this particular trek.
I had come to a roadblock on the Tobacco Trail, quite literally. The Highway 301 bridge across Lake Marion still exists, and still connects across the lake. However, in 1987 it was closed to automotive traffic, and now serves as a fishing bridge. If I were going to cross from Orangeburg into Clarendon County, I was going to have to do some backtracking.
For some reason the town of Santee intrigues me. It’s something of an anomaly compared to the other cities on the Tobacco Trail. There is no main street or central business district. Those features make me think that the town as, say, Orangeburg, Allendale or Bamberg. I decided to find out more about it. In the process of that research I discovered a new ghost town.
You might have noticed. There haven’t been any new podcasts lately. There is an unfortunate reason for that. When my Macbook crashed at the first of the summer I was able to recover just about everything. Just about. The casualty was all of my raw audio files. That includes interviews about historic cemeteries, interviews about … Read More “Where Are the Podcasts?” »