South Carolina - Day 4 - the drive to Greenwood, Joanna

Newberry/I-26/Sumter NF KOA, Kinards

Monday, 8 May 2023

During the night, the frig shut itself off yet again.  I suppose this time it could blame the weather, though any normal RV frig should be able to withstand rain and lightning (as long as there's no direct hit, of course).

And what we had, starting about 9:00 PM, was some very heavy rain and thunder/lightning.  It was still going on at 3:00.  I got up about 2:00 for the bathroom and found Dext still huddled by my bed, as he had been hours earlier, so I stayed up with him to try to reassure him.  The rain finally stopped about 4:00 for our first walk, though it was still raining underneath the trees.

On our second walk, Dext and I came across a man who was clearly making preparations for getting on the road.  I asked him, "Fixing to leave?" and he said, "It's another adventure."  It turned out he was only going to see his daughter in Belton, FL, but I thought that was a great attitude.  As a by-the-way, there's also a Belton, SC, and a Belton, TX

today's route

You can see that by no stretch could this be called a direct route between campgrounds.  Google was really unhappy when I insisted on it.  But I wanted to go through Greenwood, and this route is how we got there.

Each time I'd traveled to Anderson, including today, I passed a business called Bigger Brains Studio, that urges folks to see their website at biggerbrains.com.  These days it's not always safe to assume what something is, especially just based on a name, and I finally looked it up.  It offers online courses to train adults in a range of business skills and software, and it offers them not only in English but also in Spanish and Portuguese.  I guess the Portuguese would cover folks from Brazil.

Farther along the road is a business called Advanced Label Worx Inc.  That name intrigued me, too, so I looked it up and learned this business custom designs and produces labels ranging from bar codes to government mandated UL compliance notices.  All right here in Anderson, pop. 28,000.

The road to Greenwood, a state highway, was lush and green.  I couldn't help contrasting it mentally with the parched western states I saw just a year ago.

I passed the turn to Lake Secession.  Interesting choice of name, isn't it?  The lake was created by a dam in 1940, and this name was chosen to mark the historic event 80 years before: in 1860, the nearby town of Abbeville was the first town to secede from the Union.  Sounds to me like more of the "lost cause" theory of the Civil War - pretend the dead Southerners (more than 3 times the number of dead Northerners) were fighting and dying for something noble and just.

Abbeville, by the way, has this slogan: "Pretty. Near. Perfect."  I passed the Opera House, built in 1904 and still in active use today (it was refurbished about 30 years ago).

Wikipedia says the Southern Baptists are head and shoulders above the other Christian denominations for membership in South Carolina, and my own observation has been that there are an awful lot of Baptist churches here.  It almost seems that every town - no matter how small - has its own Baptist church.

I crossed Little River (it was).

Just feet apart I saw two warning signs: one to watch for tractors, the other to watch for equestrians.

South Carolina has its share of the red dirt that is so characteristic of Georgia.

I passed through the Sumter National Forest.  Lots of thick green trees.

I saw a billboard with an unexpected message: "Love Yourself First - Free or Low Cost Birth Control."  I didn't have a chance to see who paid for it and couldn't find it online.  But I did find a website that seems to be aimed at helping young women talk to their sexual partners about birth control.  It ends with "Remember: Put Yourself First.  While it takes two to tango, remember to respect your boundaries and to always put yourself (and your health) first."  I wish someone had told me these things when I was younger.  A sign for me that times are changing for the better.

Lots of magnolias in bloom - a lovely sight.

And we came to Greenwood, "Emerald City," they say.  Greenwood claims to have the "Widest Main Street in America," so I went to see.

Main Street in Greenwood

I don't know how it really ranks on the country's Main Streets, but I do know that most of the ones I've seen were given that name when the town was first founded, which in most cases was decades, if not centuries, ago and so, yeah, they aren't very wide.

Some municipal buildings fronted on Main Street, and we stopped in their parking lot for some lunch and a bathroom break.  While Dext and I walked around the area, we came across a nice little garden.

The sign is enlarged below right.

Nice that a town of 23,000 would think
to do something like this.

On my way out of town, I stopped to buy gas for $2.87/gallon (the cash price).  I was apparently so overcome by the low price that I made the wrong turn onto US-187, and it wasn't until I started recognizing things I'd driven by earlier that I realized the mistake.  That was a 14-mile round trip mistake.

I saw a couple more watch-for-tractors signs, though most of the land I was passing looked more like cattle grazing land than farm land.  It was pretty country, with thick woods and hills and scattered farm houses.

At the town of Bradley, I realized I'd made another wrong turn, and this one resulted in a 30-mile round trip I didn't need to take.  Good thing the gas was cheap.  These wrong turns are shown on the route map above as those legs extending south of Greenwood.

All day I passed through towns that had no identifying signs - not even on businesses.  Then I came to Cross Hill, where there was a sign but no other hint of a town.

I crossed a bridge without a sign that said what river/creek the bridge crossed, but it did have a sign saying "Patriots of the Little River Regiment National Bridge."  I've searched diligently and haven't figured out where the designation of "national bridge" came from, but I finally did figure out the rest of it.  During the Revolutionary War, a farmer and miller named James Williams, who lived in this area, was in a local militia.  That group split into those supporting the British (Loyalists) and those supporting the Americans (Patriots); Williams fell into the latter group.  He took charge of a regiment named after the nearby Little River - hence the Patriots of the Little River Regiment.  This regiment won and lost some battles, but they were notably successful at the Battle of Kings Mountain, where the vastly outnumbered Patriots overwhelmed the Loyalists holding the top of the mountain.  So that's who this regiment was, and possibly why a bridge might have been named for them, but why wouldn't something online say so?  

I passed a sign for Sterilite® - that's what the sign said - and though I didn't see anything else in the vicinity, I'm guessing there was a plant nearby.  I actually have a few containers made by them with me.

And then I came to Clinton, and passed the Presbyterian College.  It's a small school - fewer than 1,200 undergraduates - and US News and World Report says they select fewer than 60% of their applicants for admission.  Clinton itself only has 7,600 residents, so the college must be a significant part of the town's life.

About 5 miles down the road I came to Joanna, which the Census Bureau says has 1,470 residents, though all I saw were a few businesses.  I guess the town is off the highway in the trees. 

I saw a Texas flag flying outside someone's house.  Passed several logging trucks and a sizeable family of donkeys.

We made it to the KOA at 2:45 and were greeted by a bubble-making machine outside the office.  First time I've seen that anywhere, let alone a campground.

One more cat photo:

This is Bucky.
Both kitties often lie on these cushions to watch the view.