Mar 4 Forty Acre Rock

 

It is a stunningly beautiful day and we are headed to Forty Acre Rock near Kershaw SC. Will and I have made two previous trip and are bringing good friend Rick along for this tour. Rick is showing off his camera above. I have used a number of his photos in this post. You should be able to see the difference.

We began hiking from the lower parking area, heading for Naked Falls first. The area around the waterfall was sporting a carpet of Trout Lilies. Will said his SEEK app identified them as Fern Lilies. We climbed the trail next to waterfall. Rick is taking a photo from the waterfall top. The water just glides over the smooth rock here.

We are on the main rock. It is evident the pandemic year of 2020 has left a fresh compliment of graffiti. We spend some time walking around the rock, looking for other trails and inspecting all the pools. There are a few other folks roaming around too.

After a grand tour of the main rock, we slip down a slight drainage to get onto the other rock areas. Before touring them, we drop down to see another waterfall and the cave beside it. The cave has been painted so many times during the past year, I'm calling it the Covid Cave. 

Elf Orpine

We explore the smaller rock areas and sit for lunch at a very nice spot. Water trickles along these rocks more than the main rock. The waterways and pools fill with Elf Orpine and other succulents. Mosses and Reindeer lichen enhance the rock gardens. 

On google earth, I spotted a rock we had not visited before. We had to go through a wooded area using a privately owned field as a guide to lead the way. And there it was. Each rock seems to have a different dynamic going on. This one was a bit drier but a beauty, just like the others. Other hikers have been here before but this is undoubtedly the most remote and least visited. 

Slipping down into a gulley, we try to stay in the woods, making our way to the next area of exploration. When we get to a powerline, we decide to head out to the road and walk along it. Our target is a creek on the other side of Nature Preserve Road. The spot to turn into the woods is a flat area of road with a one car pull in spot. Here we head into the woods, passing an old farm or timbering dump. The old road leads to a small waterfall and creek.

It is a small waterfall but quite scenic. Just downstream from here, the creek disappears under a rock jumble. You can get inside the jumble and climb around, listening to the creek crashing down rocks below you but out of sight.

Rock jumble with underground creek

Will's plan all along, has been to walk up a side drainage here. We do that and see large rock outcropping and erratically placed boulders. As we walk around here, we keep seeing interesting boulders and keep walking. 

We are amazed to see so many and that they are solitary and so oddly placed. This goes on for a good 1/4 mile. We are roughly walking downstream but just out of sight and sound of the creek. 

We are not able to cross the creek, so we walk alongside it until we reach old 601. The road is overgrown but there is a bridge over the creek and we make our way back toward the parking area. But wait. there is one more stop. I had seen on GIS a cemetery across Rt 601. We walk over to it. It is on a gated road a couple hundred yards back in the woods.

Feb 25 Cades Cove Hikes

 

It is a nice day and Cades Cove is always a popular place, so our plan is to drive the 11 mile loop and do short walks off the beaten path, so to speak. This spot is quite scenic, a few large trees in the middle of a pasture, with Rich Mountain in the background. If you walk up to this spot, you'll see it is a cemetery.

Unmarked stones have been getting pushed around by the tree roots for years. This is the Ike Lequire Cemetery. There are 16 unmarked graves. 

Now we are at the Lawson Cemetery, hidden on a wooden knoll near the Dan Lawson homesite. It has 25 graves. Dan and his wife are buried here. This is the famous cemetery which never became part of the park property since it was titled to "God Almighty". 

As you leave the Cable Mill Visitor Center continuing to drive around the loop, this pond is always visible in the forest on the left. Finally, I made the short walk to it. There were 3 men wading in it, engrossed in some aquatic study.   

Above are 3 large Dogwood trees alongside the Cable Cemetery. We walked back in the wood here and saw several deer. They didn't mind our presence a bit.

Just opposite the Missionary Baptist Church, is this stone circle. No one knows what the purpose of this was. It is associated with a former CCC camp. It could have been a flower bed, fountain or flagpole base. It had become obscured with vegetation over the years. The Cades Cove Preservation Society had a workday dedicated to reviving it and intriguing people like me with it.  

On the path to Gregory Cave, we passed an old homesite and saw this massive Cypress tree. There were a number of  them nearby too.

I have always thought this is the entrance to Gregory Cave, but I'm not certain. It was once a commercially operated show cave by the Gregory family. The nearby Missionary Baptist Church held some services in the main room back in 1954. It was prepared as a bomb shelter with 1000 person capacity. There are some rotting picnic tables nearby which were used by the NPS for group presentations. It looks like you could slither in there but not today. 

The sinks

Feb 24 Visiting Old Friends at Albright Grove

 

Cemetery on Old Settlers Trail

It's been a few years since I have made the trek up Maddron Bald Trail to the Albright Grove. I'm excited to visit my old friends in the grove. Champion Fiber Co owned the area and planned to log it. The National Park Service condemned the property and after a suit, the property reverted to them. It is named for Horace Albright the second director of the National Park Service.

We start our hike on the tiny and obscure parking spot and walk up an old road, still paved. A park employee passes us in his vehicle, on the way to work on Old Settlers Trail. We stop at the Baxter cabin to glance around. Behind the cabin is a spring and probably a springhouse existed here also. 

Tulip top missing

The hike to the grove has 3 distinct sections. The first being a gated but drivable road up to the junction with Old Settlers Trail. Then an older road which eventually ends in a loop. That was probably where early tourists drove to and turned back. Then an older track continues to a crossing over Indian Camp Creek on a spectacular footlog bridge.

We walked the Albright Loop in a clockwise direction. There are always new trees down on this trail and today was no exception. Some had been recent and had barely even been walked around. We took our time walking, noting what tree species we were seeing. The Big hemlock are all dead or dying. The poplars have taken over as the giants of the grove. They are being challenged next by some big oaks. The giant Silverbells, Maples and Fraser Magnolias are wonderful to see so large. Upper branches are covered in resurrection fern and other small bushes and even trees. many tops have been lost to lightening and wind.

Fraser Sedge

Silverbell burl

Lunch was simply peanut butter and strawberry rhubarb sandwiches but the spot made it a grand occasion. 

Fallen Hemlock

I estimate the diameter of this Hemlock to be about 40 inches. It fell right across the trail. You could still smell the sap.

Indian Camp Creek bridge

Tree which grew on a nurse log

Hemlock adelgid 

Feb 17 Betty McGee Creek Bridge

 

It's muddy out there

Back in 2019, the process began to replace the bridge at Thornburg Farm over Betty McGee Creek. The old bridge had survived many years and remained in place with a cable attached to a tree. About 5 years back, the Uwharrie Trailblazers raised the bridge and built up supports after it took a beating during a storm. It had a railing before the storm but that was gone. It survived again until 2 years ago when it was left tilted both lengthwise and widthwise. The Trailblazers asked the Forest Service what could be done. An engineer looked at it with Mike Spisak, then the district ranger. Some flagging went up about 100 feet downriver and it stayed there until last week.

The Forest Service hired a contractor from China Grove to built a new bridge. No expense was spared. This one is a beauty. 

The dirt bike helps when a tool is needed back at the truck parked by the trailhead.

The old bridge

The trail will jog over to the bridge and back on the other side. These relocations will be done by the contractor. It looks like about 100 feet on both sides. This work has already been roughed in and fill dirt being used to secure the supports. Quite a few golf balls have been unearthed during this work. Oddly, all were found on river right. None on the other side.

The contractor also will re-grade the road from Thornburg farm to the creek, although it looks like it needs more than re-grading.

Jan 12 Caw Caw

Caw Caw Interpretive Center is a Charleston County Park encompassing land which made up parts of several rice plantations. We walked over the entire park mainly bird watching. Just before leaving we came to the site of the Locust Hill Plantation manor house. There was nothing remaining. When reading about the plantation later, I learned that many of the slaves from Locust Hill joined the Stono Rebellion or the Slave Rebellion of 1739. The store where the slaves armed themselves was very near the plantation. After arming themselves, a number of Locust Hill slaves joined the group.

Here is the story copied from PBS.org:

What exactly triggered the Stono Rebellion is not clear. Many slaves knew that small groups of runaways had made their way from South Carolina to Florida, where they had been given freedom and land. Looking to cause unrest within the English colonies, the Spanish had issued a proclamation stating that any slave who deserted to St Augustine would be given the same treatment. Certainly this influenced the potential rebels and made them willing to accept their situation. A fall epidemic had disrupted the colonial government in nearby Charlestown (Charleston), and word had just arrived that England and Spain were at war, raising hopes that the Spanish in St. Augustine would give a positive reception to slaves escaping from Carolina plantations. But what may have actually triggered the rebellion on September 9th was the soon-to-be-enacted Security Act.

In mid-August, a Charlestown newspaper announced the Security Act. A response to the white's fears of insurrection, the act required that all white men carry firearms to church on Sundays, a time when whites usually didn't carry weapons and slaves were allowed to work for themselves. Anyone who didn't comply with the new law by September 29 would be subjected to a fine.

Whatever triggered the Rebellion, early on the morning of the 9th, a Sunday, about twenty slaves gathered near the Stono River in St. Paul's Parish, less than twenty miles from Charlestown. The slaves went to a shop that sold firearms and ammunition, armed themselves, then killed the two shopkeepers who were manning the shop. From there the band walked to the house of a Mr. Godfrey, where they burned the house and killed Godfrey and his son and daughter. They headed south. It was not yet dawn when they reached Wallace's Tavern. Because the innkeeper at the tavern was kind to his slaves, his life was spared. The white inhabitants of the next six or so houses they reach were not so lucky -- all were killed. The slaves belonging to Thomas Rose successfully hid their master, but they were forced to join the rebellion. (They would later be rewarded. See Report re. Stono Rebellion Slave-Catchers.) Other slaves willingly joined the rebellion. By eleven in the morning, the group was about 50 strong. The few whites whom they now encountered were chased and killed, though one individual, Lieutenant Governor Bull, eluded the rebels and rode to spread the alarm.

The slaves stopped in a large field late that afternoon, just before reaching the Edisto River. They had marched over ten miles and killed between twenty and twenty-five whites.

Around four in the afternoon, somewhere between twenty and 100 whites had set out in armed pursuit. When they approached the rebels, the slaves fired two shots. The whites returned fire, bringing down fourteen of the slaves. By dusk, about thirty slaves were dead and at least thirty had escaped. Most were captured over the next month, then executed; the rest were captured over the following six months -- all except one who remained a fugitive for three years.

Uncomfortable with the increasing numbers of blacks for some time, the white colonists had been working on a Negro Act that would limit the privileges of slaves. This act was quickly finalized and approved after the Stono Rebellion. No longer would slaves be allowed to grow their own food, assemble in groups, earn their own money, or learn to read. Some of these restrictions had been in effect before the Negro Act, but had not been strictly enforced.