Tag: South Carolina

From Backyard to Ocean

Posted on By Tom 11 Comments on From Backyard to Ocean
Geocaching and Maps, Paddling

Backyard2Ocean

Last night Laura and I were sitting out on our deck look out over the backyard and down to the lake. I wondered what would happen if I were to put my kayak in the water here and paddle it all the way to the ocean. What would I encounter? What rivers would I paddle?

Actually, I’ve got a pretty darn good idea. I’ve paddled and/or explored some sizeable chunks of that route, so I know a bit about it. My paddle route would take this path…

Lake Fairfield –> Brushy Creek –> Enoree River –> Broad River –> Congaree River –> Santee River –> Atlantic Ocean

I’d love to be able to do that whole route without ever having to leave the boat. Unfortunately, there are a few things like shoals, trees, strainers, and a few dams in the way, not to mention Parr Shoals Reservoir and Lake Marion.

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Greenville Historical Aerial Imagery

Posted on By Tom 3 Comments on Greenville Historical Aerial Imagery
History and Genealogy, Internet, Local

Downtown Sanford 1920

Sometime last week the Greenville Cageliner had an article about a new website from the Greenville County GIS Office (http://gis.greenvillesc.gov/historicalimagery/). The website features historical aerial photography imagery as a map, similar to Google Earth. Images are available for 1955, 1965, 1979, 1989, 1997, and 2009, and cover the downtown area, along with a bit of the county. Also included is the Sanford Insurance Map of the city from 1920.

I could spend a HUGE amount of time exploring the site. Looking at how the city has changed over the decades has been fascinating, and somewhat depressing. The patterns of urban sprawl are quite clear at a distance, and it can be sad to look back on landmarks that are no longer there. On the other hand, there have been some marked improvements in areas such as along the banks of the Reedy River, and these images show that very clearly.

I started with the area around the old Furman campus. I had never really understood the location of the old bell tower in relation to the rest of the campus, but this imagery makes it very clear. (Click on the images for a larger view.)

Old Furman Campus 1955

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A Tuesday Sparklberry Paddle

Posted on By Tom 3 Comments on A Tuesday Sparklberry Paddle
Paddling

 

This week is my spring break, and despite the fact that I still needed to go into the office and work a couple of days, and despite the fact that two days of my break would be taken up with dental surgery, I was determined to do some paddling. Dwight was in the same frame of mind, so we had arranged to meet Tuesday morning and take a trip down to Sparkleberry Swamp and test our navigation skills. It turned out to be a fantastic trip, with lots of wildlife and some a amazing wilderness isolation.

Sunday and Monday had been rainy and stormy, and it looked like Tuesday was going to tbe the only day with decent weather.  It was cloudy in Greenville when I started out, but when I picked up Dwight in Columbia, and when we got on down toward the swamp, it looked like it the weather gods were going to smile on us.  Although it was chilly, we had perfect weather the entire day.

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A Super Moon Weekend

Posted on By Tom 2 Comments on A Super Moon Weekend
Miscellaneous

Reedy Falls Panorama

It’s been a busy week, and I haven’t had much time for blogging. I’ve got a few projects underway, and I hope to write about those shortly. In the meantime, here’s a quick weekend update…

Friday night:

One of Laura’s friends from grad school at UC Riverside has a goal – to visit every state in the United States. Carolyn had two left on her list, Idaho and South Carolina. Her friend from Germany, Christian, has accompanied her on this quest, so she met him in Charleston, toured there for a day, then headed to Greenville for a visit with Laura.

We picked up Carolyn and Christian and headed down to River Place. We knew that there was a TEDx event at the Peace Center, and that evening there was supposed to be something called the Greenville Xperience in the amphitheater, so we wanted to get parked early. We wandered around the Falls Park area, walking over the Liberty Bridge and enjoying a warm spring evening, as did half of Greenville, it seems.

Christian, Carolyn, and Laura

At one point I spotted to kayakers launching above the falls, and I knew what was about to happen. I took off at a run with my camera, but was not in time to see the first boat go over the falls. I did, however, catch the second one.

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A Paddle and a Pow Wow on the Savannah River

Posted on By Tom No Comments on A Paddle and a Pow Wow on the Savannah River
History and Genealogy, Paddling, Travel

Lowcountry Unfiltered on the Savannah River

It was the second Saturday of the month, and time for another Lowcountry Unfiltered outing. For this excursion we were headed to the heart of some Civil War history along the Savannah River. The plan was to paddle a 5 mile stretch from Beck’s Ford Landing to Millstone Landing. It turned out to be a momentous trip for a variety of reasons.

I drove down right after work Friday evening and crashed at Matt’s place in Bluffton. The next morning we loaded up the boats at met the rest of the LCU guys at their usual meeting place, Grace Coastal Church. It was a small group – five of us met at the church, and James Martin came down from Columbia to meet us at the landing.

As we drove through the town of Hardeeville, small signs with the word “Pow Wow” and arrows pointing in the general direction we were going. When we got to the turn off for the take-out at Millstone Landing, we saw the following sign…

Apparently there was a big Pow Wow at the landing. We were starting to wonder if this was a good idea.

When we got to the landing there were tents set up everywhere and things were just getting started. Parking was just starting to get scarce, but we found places for two of our cars. We loaded up our boats into the remaining trucks and drove on up to our put-in at Beck’s Ferry Landing.

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Of Tricentennials and Tetrons

Posted on By Tom 13 Comments on Of Tricentennials and Tetrons
History and Genealogy

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Three unrelated events had the effect of catapulting me back 41 years. Several months ago I bought a Rubik’s Cube as part of a musical experiment. Two separate Facebook friends posted links to songs from South Carolina’s Tricentennial, and this week I met with my friend Tim Taylor about setting up a geocaching trail around the Roper Mountain Science Center. Those three events together created a time warp, and sent me in search of information about Greenville’s ill-fated Piedmont Exposition Park, and the geodesic cube designed by Buckminster Fuller that was supposed to sit atop Roper Mountain.

It was the 1969-1970 school year, and I was in Mrs. Medlock’s third grade class at Gray Court-Owings School. In third grade the social studies curriculum is all about South Carolina, so the timing with the state’s tricentennial was perfect. We all sang that we were good Sandlappers, and we learned about the various sections of the of the state, from the coastal plains to the Piedmont.

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Contra Dancing

Posted on By Tom No Comments on Contra Dancing
Entertainment

Contra Dancing

Friday night was a busy night. Laura wanted to go to her favorite restaurant, the Lazy Goat, and I wanted to go dancing. We did both.

Many years ago Laura and I were very active with the Harvest Moon Folk Society, which sponsored a contra dance once a month.  We started dancing with them when they were just getting started at the Stone Center at McPherson Park, moved with them when they started at Slater Hall, and continued  when they finally found their home at the River Falls Lodge up near Jones Gap.  For whatever reason, we stopped going to the dances.  Perhaps it was because River Falls was a bit further away, or perhaps it was just because we got out of the habit. Regardless, it’s been probably twelve years since we’ve been to a dance.

Which brings us to the present day…

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Chorale Chamber Ensemble Winter 2011 Concert

Posted on By Tom No Comments on Chorale Chamber Ensemble Winter 2011 Concert
Music

This past weekend was a concert weekend for the Greenville Chorale Chamber Ensemble, so I wasn’t able to get much blogging done. We had rehearsals, then the concert itself Sunday afternoon in Daniel Chapel at Furman University. This year we did the Rutter Requiem, accompanied by a small ensemble that included organ, harp, flute, oboe, … Read More “Chorale Chamber Ensemble Winter 2011 Concert” »

Sparkleberry Unfiltered

Posted on By Tom No Comments on Sparkleberry Unfiltered
Paddling

The Gang - 14

It’s the second Saturday of the month, and that means another trip with my friends from Lowcountry Unfiltered. For this trip we decided to tackle Sparkleberry Swamp, at the north end of Lake Marion. I had paddled it before, but we only did a short trip that day. I was eager to see more, and I was curious how the swamp would look in winter.

Preparations:

Matt and I went back and forth on this trip. What we wanted to do was to hit the heart of the swamp, and paddle from Sparkleberry Landing to Risers Lake. However, there were lots of variables that had to be in place before we could take the trip – weather, water levels, etc. We had several alternatives, such as launching from Low Falls Landing, or doing something different all together.

The Palmetto Paddlers were also planning a trip to Sparkleberry for the same weekend, but they were going Sunday instead of Saturday. I contacted Kate Whitmire, the trip’s organizer, to see if she had any insight into water levels. She pointed me to the USGS water levels website for Pineville on Lake Marion. According to Kate, a reading of 72.09 was necessary for a paddle without portages.

I took my GPS track from my last trip, trip reports from several other paddlers, and placed all the data I could find on the Lowcountry Unfiltered wiki site. Based on this data, I created a GPS file that included waypoints and routes, as well as a Google Earth file with image and map overlays.

John Nelson also shared a great map of the swamp. It didn’t have the detail of the Google Earth data, but it had the “bones” of the swamp, and would prove useful to make sure we were on a major channel. It also provided names for the various creeks and guts that weren’t available in Google Earth.

I printed out copies of John’s map, my Google Earth maps, and a map of the 7.5 minute USGS topo map of the area. I had also purchased a fishing map of Lake Marion. I put all of these in a waterproof map case I had just purchased, and also programmed all of the waypoints into my GPS. I felt like I was ready.

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