Columbia and Greenville, SC

We spent 2 nights at The Barnyard RV Park in Lexington, SC on May 22 and 23. It was a quiet, basic park with a lot of tree shade. We went into Columbia and walked the Saluda Riverwalk Trail with Pepper. It’s an easy paved trail that follows the river and has historical markers. It was nicely shaded and runs next to the zoo, though we didn’t see any animals, just smelled them at one point! We saw a few people kayaking and tubing in the river, I’m sure it’s packed weekends and summer. On the return walk we put Pepper in the backpack and Kevin carried her, she seemed quite content! For dinner we went to a Mexican restaurant within walking distance of the RV Park. It’s was ok, I gave it a 5 and that’s only because the chips were homemade and really good.
Our next stop was near Greenville, SC at Ivy Acres Lodge and RV Park where we stayed for 3 nights, May 24-27. The area is pretty and we’re starting to see more hills. As we were setting up our neighbors and the maintenance guy, who is a camp-worker, and his wife greeted us. That night we all enjoyed a campfire and we met a few more people. The area had been hit by Hurricane Helene and there were a lot of fallen trees, they’ve done a lot of work to cleanup but you can see the remnants. I went for a hike on the park trails and trees were torn up from the roots. On Memorial Day we went into Greenville for lunch and walked around downtown and Falls Park. Reedy River runs through Greenville and became polluted from textile factories starting in the mid 1800’s. In 1960 a four lane bridge was built over the falls and became obscured by the bridge and traffic noise. Most people didn’t know the falls were there or thought it was “just a trickle”. The Carolina Foothills Garden Club began a campaign in 1967 to reclaim the land and in 2001 the city council finally approved to remove the bridge and rebuild downtown Greenville, with the falls the center of attraction. It’s a beautiful parkRead more