Feels Like Winter in South Carolina

We have been fortunate to this point to have very mild weather at worst and mostly sunny days.  A few days of downpouring rain on our entire trip thus far was matched shortly after arriving in Fair Play, South Carolina.  We stayed a full seven nights at Carolina Landing, a Thousand Trails property on the Eastern border of the state, a mile from the Georgia border.  It was a nice property that sat out on a large lake.  We met our neighbor Kat, who treated us to s'mores our second night there and kindly let the kids play with her dogs.  Other than that, for a full week we saw and communicated very little with anyone other than each other and we enjoyed it.  Most of the campground was empty, due to the expected freeze and less than ideal rainy camping weather.  It was in the high twenties at night for our first three nights and each of us felt the draft all night.  This RV, especially around the slide out, is not well insulated.  A positive is that our heater has been a champ, but we have filled up our 13 gallon propane tank twice now in the past two weeks. Our heating blanket which Erica purchased on Amazon before we left has helped us as well.  Best of all, after the twenty-four hours of rain on day four we had zero water inside the RV...thank you Joe Clemons!!!  Passing that test was a huge momentum lift since we have been battling water in the RV since day one of our trip.

It's country in Fair Play and so there was only one thing to do on our sunny days...hike!  We spent two days driving into the Sumter National Forest.  Our first outing we drove thirty minutes up to Long Creek, SC to hike three trails to three different water falls, Riley Moore Falls (about a two mile total hike since we parked on the road instead of driving down the logging road to the trail head due to mud and large pot holes), Bull Guice Falls (right off the highway, the paved trail takes you to a class four rapid and falls that is popular for watching kayakers in the summer months), and last was Ready Station Falls (a 300 yard hike from the highway is a spectacular 40ft falls).  We did not see anyone out on the trails and the weather was sunny and in the mid-forties...perfect hiking weather!  There are more than thirty named falls in this area of the forest with most of them flowing into or directly located on the Chattooga River. We were pleasantly suprised, there is so much left to explore here.  Since we never expected to find this it made it that much more exciting.  

We made our second outing into the SumterNF to visit an abandoned railroad tunnel from the mid-1850's that is preserved as a state park called Stumphouse Tunnel.  Once again we were out in the park alone, no rangers or people to be seen, so it felt like we shouldn't be there at all.  The weather was cold and rainy with a few rays of sun peeking out every so often.  We hiked into the tunnel to the wall at the point where the mining stopped.  The tunnel never came to be.  The railroad failed due to funds running dry about the time of the start of the Civil War.  Boyd and I hiked up on top of the tunnel entrance as Erica and Blythe hunted old broken glass for their glass collections.  As we left another young couple showed up to tour it.  The first people we ran into in two days of excursions. We headed back to camp and stopped briefly in the country town of Walhalla.  

We took a rainy day out to grocery shop and on the way back stopped fifteen minutes from camp in Clemson, SC to see the university campus and introduce the kids to another school for furthering their academic future...maybe???  The town might as well be painted orange as there is nothing else there but the university and a what seemed like a Clemson "swag" store on every other corner.  This made perfect sense since everyone was sporting orange and white in preparation for their football team's second Division 1A National Championship in three years.  They won their league championship and were accepted into the college football playoffs while we were here.

We spent our rainy Saturday night at the movies in Anderson, SC.  We decided to watch the last of the Disney holiday trifecta this year by seeing "The Nutcracker and the Four Realms".  It was the best out of the three according to all four of us. We used giftcards that were given to us as gifts prior to leaving work in May.   

We enjoyed this peaceful week together by reflecting on our previous four weeks that were filled with valuable time with family and friends.  We have kept up the card game playing frenzy that keeps us company on cold nights inside. We found time to buy a pre-lit, mini-Christmas tree from Target with a pre-lit star shaped topper to decorate with our three ornaments that we purchased in Boston.  Boyd led the decorating and put his Goodwill purchase on the tree to finish it off. He said, "this tree is our best tree!"  His Christmas spirit is really alive. Right before we left Fair Play, our elf on the shelf, Elmer, found us on the road. Boyd spent the first morning filling Elmer in on the last year. It is the sweetest thing to listen too both Boyd and Blythe talk to Elmer.  He is assisting our parenting nicely and we are happy he has joined our journey.   We are even more grateful for another year of believers!

Peace and Love