Mark's Photo Travels

With 2019's endless summer finally gone for the year and cooler less humid weather firmly established, I finally felt able to venture outdoors. I have some long hikes planned for this weekend, so I wanted something that wouldn't tax me too much. Glassy Mountain Heritage Preserve fit my needs perfectly. Glassy Mountain Heritage Preserve is a 65 acre nature preserve located on Glassy Mountain in Pickens County, SC , not to be confused with a mountain of the same name one county west in Greenville County. The South Carolina Department of Natural Resources acquired the property in 1990. One official trail winds around the mountain up to the summit, but I also found a few unofficial trails leading to several overlooks. Glassy Mountain is an example of a monadnock , an isolated mountain rising above the foothills of the Upstate of South Carolina. Paris Mountain in Greenville County is another example of a monadnock. Paris Mountain also has hiking trails (courtesy of the state...

Back in February and March , I visited Rocky Bottom in northern Pickens County along U.S. 178 to explore old logging roads and waterfalls, but an area that big can't be thoroughly explored in one day. This time I went back to explore more of the area in Rocky Bottom I've explored about a year ago, Spencers Alley and Hunter Camp Road . I parked off the side of a wide part of Spencers Alley near a green gate, now open for the season. I spent most of the late morning to mid-afternoon hiking down old logging roads and whacking my way though thorny patches of blackberry vines. After returning to my car and relaxing a while, I found I still had time to visit a section of Rocky Bottom Creek containing one of my favorite obscure waterfalls: Rocky Bottom Gorge Falls. I visited this same waterfall back in April 2018 . I took the same way I found back then to reach Rocky Bottom Creek, a short distance downstream from an old dam I found back in March . This area also happens to ju...

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...