18 October 2011

More Adventure Then Exercise

Sunday was a little bit of a failure exercise wise, but local road tripping with my husband is always a good adventure.

The excitement was still there from Saturday's swamp walk so I decided to find another new walk to do on Sunday.  We settled on exploring one of the portions of the Palmetto Trail and set out to find the entrance.  The Palmetto trail runs the entire length of South Carolina so it has been on our must see list for hiking since we arrived.

When we arrived at the trail head there was something a little bit suspicious going on in the parking lot so I wasn't 100% sure that I had picked a great place to hike.  We had a choice to go towards the coast on the Swamp Fox Passage, but that route involved crossing a large traffic filled road so we ended up walking in the other direction on the Lake Moultrie Passage.

There was more trash then usual on the trail as we entered, but we did walk through the woods, over the train tracks, and up a large hill to a stunning view of the lake.  We admired the graffiti and I saw some interesting smoke stacks on the other side of the lake that I thought would be a great subject for some stock photography.  We admired the graffiti on the lake shore and decided to go back to the car, and try to find another (perhaps cleaner!) trail head closer to the smoke stacks so I could grab a shot or two.

Lucky for us there was a map close to the parking lot that we had overlooked when we entered the trail.  We grabbed it and were on the go.  It was another gorgeous fall day so I was happy riding around with my husband with the windows and sunroof open.

Enroute to the smoke stack we found the burial place of Francis Marion.  He is a local historical figure from the Revolutionary War whose name pops up frequently in our area so we made a little detour to visit.  It was set back down a long road in a peaceful location that provided some good quick history facts.

My husband is getting very good at searching out things we see in the distance -- in fact I might share some more of our recent finds in a blog post later this week!  My sense of direction was confused, but he somehow got us right on top of the power station with the smoke stack that I wanted to photograph.  It was an okay vantage point, and I took a few shots, but knew they were not as good as the ones I had gotten from our adventure at Riverfront Park in weeks earlier.

Then we saw some signs for a housing development that looked like it was on the other side of the plant so per usual the day lead to adventuring down a dirt road with no idea what we would find.  I was able to get some great images through a fence and the vantage point was much closer.  I don't generally bring all of my photography equipment with me on a weekend day so I was working with a wider lens then I needed for the right shot so this closer vantage point greatly improved my results.

With a couple stock shots in my camera we set out to find a 6 mile loop trail near the lake to get in our long walk -- the original reason that we started adventuring this day.  We were able to find the road which of course turned out to be another long dirt road, but to our disappointment the road was closed off and the location of the trail was unclear so we ended up giving up and headed back towards home to have a little grill out for lunch and relax.

We didn't get in as long as of a walk as planned, but the adventure certainly was sweet.

2 comments:

  1. I love adventuring around with you and always want to be your navigator!

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