Croft State Park, Spartanburg, South Carolina
I will praise You, O LORD, with all my heart; I will tell of all Your wonders. I will be glad and rejoice in You; I will sing praise to Your name, O Most High. Psalm 9:1-2
No shopping for us! We made a concerted effort to remain far removed from civilization today! I’m sure it was nothing short of chaos in Spartanburg today!
One time. One. Many, many years ago. I made the mistake of going out on Black Friday. I figured a visit to the local, very small town, JoAnn Fabrics would be fine. After all, who would be shopping there? Well, as it turned out, a lot of people! I picked up the few things I was looking for and then waited in a check-out line that pretty much wrapped around the store for well over an hour! Why did I wait? I could have gone back and only paid a small amount more (maybe). But instead, I hung in there. Not too bright in my younger days . .
Instead, we opted for fresh air this afternoon.
I remember the trails from when we were here before. They were all pretty easy walking with a few sloping hills every now and then. They were leaf-covered and had a couple of roots, so when we decided to head out, I wasn’t planning on taking my walking stick. However, in an effort to appease Blaine, I did it anyway. When we were discussing it, he told me there were some hills and roots and he was glad to have his the other day. He didn’t do a very good job of describing the trail. There were ravines and there were streams to cross that were too wide for me to just hop over and there were quite a few roots to climb over and on and there was muck to get across and cement ‘sand bags’ to climb down and up, and I was very glad I had my stabilizer with me! I would say this trail started easy, and the degree of difficulty increased the further we walked.
We saw horses from a distance and two guys on bikes, but other than that, we saw no one until we were almost home and then the people seemed to be converging on the trail like a bus dropped them off.
We ended up taking a fairly long hike – about 5 miles – so Blaine could show me the sinkhole he discovered on Wednesday. Wow! He was right! You really have to see it in person to fully appreciate it. After a bit of study, we determined that what most likely happened was that during a torrential rain, the land fell away (right at the trail I might add!) and the mud was washed out into the lake. Wouldn’t that have been great (and maybe a bit scary) to witness?!?
In the beginning . . .
There’s that sinkhole.
A bit of perspective.
Look how deep that is?
The trail is right in front of my toes.
We found the mud slide
This is looking back towards the sinkhole
It’s a lot of new ground.
Some reminded me of quicksand and we didn’t/couldn’t walk on it.
Awww . . . look!
Critter prints!
We also discovered an old cemetery thanks to Blaine’s keen eye. It seemed to be the plot for the Harman family. There were tree trunks around it in a rectangle shape, but I don’t know if the Harmans did that, or it was put there by the Park at some point. The trees were old. The markers were too. I tried to research the family, but found nothing.
The tombstones for the some of the Harman family
There must have been some kind of illness, because this one and the next died within two days of each other.
One was 13, the other a year old.
So very sad!
This is just a view on the way home.
That’s the extent of our excitement for today. Sure beats shopping!