Mark's Photo Travels

Howdy readers, I've been posting to this blog since 2011, and for some time I've wanted to change the website's name to something more descriptive of what this blog is all about: taking photos of waterfalls, old buildings, cemeteries, and anything else I find interesting in the Upstate of South Carolina, Western North Carolina, and surrounding areas. I changed the name of my blog from "Outdoors In Upstate South Carolina" to "Mark's Photo Travels" several years ago because I felt the new name better described what this blog is about. But I couldn't figure out at the time how to change my blog's website name without breaking the many links to my posts I can see in Google Webmaster Tools and from the Facebook links that show up in my Blogger dashboard from time to time. The number of links to my blog posts has naturally increased since then. I recently figured out a relatively painless way to make the transition. Unnecessary details follow

A few weeks ago, I went out to Rocky Bottom to visit the Eastatoe Creek Heritage Preserve . I had wanted to find a path down to the creek so I could explore and see if I could some waterfalls. I didn't find a path, even after I had been studying old aerial maps to find logging roads, and I wanted to try one more time. Once again I parked in the Foothills Trail parking access area. I expected the parking access to empty like last time, but to my surprise it wasn't. I hiked down the road to where a satellite view showed what may have been some old logging roads, but I found nothing but forest. So I went back to my car and parked near the gate to the trailhead for the Eastatoe Creek Heritage Preserve. These photos are from my most recent visit: I found a spot where I thought an old logging road may have once branched off from the trail. If there was a logging road, it didn't go far. I did find an old rusting mattress box spring and some old cans of J ohnson's

Recently, officials with the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources  announced the opening of a new Wildlife Management Area, the 1757 acre Tall Pines Wildlife Management Area located in northern Greenville County. The area is now open for hunting, fishing, and hiking. Part of new WMA runs along the South Saluda River, with one parking access off Moody Bridge Road  near Tall Pines Lake. The South Carolina DNR has produced a helpful PDF map of the WMA. While I was adding  the area to OpenStreetMap , I could see some some lakes, disused agricultural fields, old logging roads that all looked interesting, but not a high priority to visit. That changed when I examined a topo map from 1961, and found an old church and a cemetery located in the new WMA. A recent satellite view showed nothing there but trees... which made me highly curious to know what, if anything, remained. Last Wednesday, I met up with Tom Taylor at the Moody Bridge Road access area to see what, if