The southeastern corner of Athens County, Ohio sits right across the Ohio River from West Virginia, making it a perfect transition as I begin my month-long exploration of the Buckeye State. While the city of Athens is home to Ohio University and exhibits all of the best qualities of a quintessential college town, you don’t have to drive far before it becomes clear you are definitely still in Appalachia. As I drove the back roads and explored the history and culture of the area, I found it both new and familiar at the same time. The history of Athens County is fascinating, and in this post I’d like to tell you all about it through six stops I made as I visited the region.
It's been a few weeks since last we met. I've been spending some time with friends and family both at home in Washington D.C. and on the road with my dad in West Virginia and my brother and his kids in New Hampshire. It was nice to be with my people for a while and to take a break from the challenges of being on the road. I needed a little time to think and reflect and not have to worry about where I'm going to sleep tonight. It's been eight months since this project began, and it needed a little reflection and redirection. I have now entered Ohio, my fifth state, which when I leave will mark 10% of the journey complete. While I had hoped to spend a month in each state and be further along than I am, the whole point of the trip is not to be rushed and to see what I want to see. Before I move forward, I thought I would share some thoughts with you on the journey so far, and where I see this going in the months and years to come…
I have written about Billy Tripp's Mindfield in passing in a few other posts, but I don't think they really conveyed how striking it was and how much I saw in it. I also don't think I can necessarily describe the ways it affected me in words, so I thought I would do a pictorial post just on Mindfield and some of the smaller details of it. Billy Tripp started building Mindfield after his parents passed away in 1989. An artist and an incredibly skilled welder, Billy kept adding to it and it just went from there. As he healed, he built, and as he built, it grew, and as it grew, it took on a life of its own. Mindfield is now a destination, and people travel from all over the world to Brownsville, Tennessee to see it.
I started the week as promised in Falls Creek Falls State Park. This really is a beautiful and well done state park. I enjoyed it so much I ended up staying two nights. There are some great trails to hike, some fun suspension bridges to cross, and of course some beautiful waterfalls. When I arrived, I got my campsite organized and then hiked from there over to the namesake Fall Creek Falls. It was, I believe, the third waterfall I've seen this month which claimed to be the highest waterfall east of the Mississippi. Well, the waterfall didn't claim that but the signage did. I've always been fascinated at how difficult it apparently is to measure a waterfall. Either way, it really doesn't matter. They've all been awesome in my book. Along the path, I saw more of one of my favorite flowers: Mountain Laurel. A lot of them are just starting to bud, and the buds look like little vanilla soft-serve cones with strawberry syrup. They make me happy every time…
I met Charles Hoffmaster at Monkey Town Brewery in Dayton, Tennessee. In retrospect, I guess a place with a name like that is as good a place as any to meet a clown. But Charles didn't strike me as a clown at first, just an affable guy with a big smile and a cool hat. He had been talking to some guys down the bar while I was working on writing my next podcast, and while their laughter made me smile, I was paying more attention to my work than to the people around me. His friends got up and left about the time that I was finished writing for the evening, and he came over and introduced himself. It was then that he told me he was a professional clown who worked for Hawthorne's Circus Bizarre Sideshow at the carnival that just pulled into town. The carnival was part of the annual Tennessee Strawberry Festival to be held in Dayton the following weekend. He said they had just arrived and set up their tent so he thought he'd go for a wander and see what was happening. As a traveler myself, his story certainly caught my attention...
I really love good small town festivals, and my visit to the National Cornbread Festival in South Pittsburgh, Tennessee was one of the best I can remember. Apparently, when the Tennessee Department of Transportation built a bypass around South Pittsburgh, downtown really took a hit. Town leaders gathered to try and think of a way to bring business back to town. Since they are home to Lodge Cast Iron, they decided to try and stage a cornbread festival. After all, who doesn't like cornbread? The first year they brought out their card tables and folding chairs and hoped for 500 people to show up. An hour after the gates opened there were 5,000 people there... and they were out of cornbread. In the 21 years since, they've learned a lot about throwing a festival, and it really showed…
Our National Parks are our greatest treasure here in the United States. They are magical places which thankfully our forefathers had the foresight to set aside in perpetuity for their children and our children and their children. They preserve some of our most amazing landscapes and ecosystems and protect all manner of flora and fauna. From the Everglades in Florida to Denali in Alaska, even the names call forth wildness in our imaginations. Have no doubt, these are our lands, and if we want to keep them that way, we need to protect them. But most of all, we need to enjoy them. This is the second post in a series I have titled In Focus, which will take a look deeper into our National Parks. These are primarily photography posts, trying to show you the beauty of our parks and take you inside of them with me. My hope is that you will get out and see them for yourself. After all, they belong to you too.
Hello my friends! It has been a great first week in Tennessee out here on the road. When I wrote last week, I was on my way out to the Deep Creek area of Great Smoky Mountain National Park in far western North Carolina. Today, I'm writing from Knoxville in north eastern Tennessee. It's been an exciting week of festivals and hiking in the park, and the weather has been just beautiful. Strawberries are coming into season and I love good, local strawberries which I'm thankful I've been able to find. I've also been trying to wrap up a few things from South Carolina and begin writing my next podcast. Thankfully the days are getting long down south and it seems like long ago and a million miles away that I was sitting in sub-freezing temperatures in the dark at 4:30 p.m. in West Virginia. Daylight and sunshine really do make a difference - I hope you are all getting outside and enjoying both. Anyways, this is what I've been up to this past week. I didn't quite get it done in time for my Thursday newsletter, but it has been busy out here…
This is my last week in South Carolina! I've been here longer than expected and I've really had a great time here. It's a small state, but some places have just pulled me in and kept me around for a while. I'm not complaining - it's been a wonderful stay - but it's definitely time for me to be moving on.
As stated when last we met, my week did indeed begin with a visit to Clemson. Clemson is a cool little college town, very purple and orange, but also a nice place for a quick visit. I caught up with some of my fraternity brothers there for dinner and then left them to their evenings while I went and checked out some of the bars around town. I particularly liked the massive Tiger Town Tavern and the Esso Club. Clemson was somewhat reminiscent of my own experience at Penn State, but on a much smaller scale. I enjoyed my short visit there, though I only stayed one night and headed out in the morning...
The mountains in the eastern United States are nice. These are the mountains I grew up with and hiking their trails is where I fell in love with the great outdoors. They have character and grace which come with their age, and it is always great to be in them. Having traveled the world though, and seen the Rockies and the Alps, the Andes and the Wrangells, the Cascades and the Brooks Range, it's difficult to look at the Appalachians with awe and amazement. They're gentle and rounded and beautiful, but "awesome" just doesn't come to mind when I crest a hill and they come into view. Hidden among them, though, are some absolute jewels of nature. The waterfalls of Appalachia are truly some of the most spectacular you will find anywhere. For three days last week, I went out to woods in western South Carolina to get some fresh air, soak in the cool spray of these magnificent waterfalls and practice the art of photography. I love photographing a good waterfall, and while I don't think a photo can ever do some of these justice, it was well worth the effort. Some of these waterfalls were right off the road and others were buried deep in the forest, but all of them were worth the time and energy to get to them...
One of my guidebooks for South Carolina described Greenville as "the coolest city you've never heard of". After spending a few days there over the last week or so, I would have to agree. I knew nothing about Greenville when I arrived, and absolutely fell in love with the city while I was there. It seemed like there was so much thought and care put into it and every time I looked around I found something else to smile about. It's an intensely livable city, with so many of the things I would look for if I was thinking about where to settle down, and it seems to be attracting quite a few young people who are doing just that. With a great arts scene, a few sports teams and some wonderful bars and restaurants it really has everything you could ask for in a city this size. And with all of these things in a city this size, why would you want to live somewhere bigger? Greenville definitely kept me around longer than I had intended to stay, and even when I did leave I felt a little bit sad to go. But I promise, I will be back. If Greenville isn't on your travel radar, it should be...
America's National Parks are our nation's most valuable resources. From the U.S. Virgin Islands to the coast of Maine and from Alaska to the South Pacific and so many amazing places in between, the National Park System protects our most treasured natural and cultural areas. There are many different designations within the system, from National Battlefields and Historic Sites to National Monuments and Heritage Areas, but none is more revered than the National Parks. Of the 420 or so sites withing the system, only about 60 have the designation of National Park. Over the course of many years, I've had the distinct pleasure of seeing almost all of them. They are all incredible places and I can't imagine my life without being able to visit these areas again and again. While sometimes the topic will come up in the news about "government owned land", we must remember that this is actually public land - our land. And it's there for us to enjoy and will be forever as long as we don't let our guard down.
Congaree National Park in central South Carolina is one of our newest National Parks, having received that designation in 2003. It protects the largest tract of old growth, bottomland hardwood forest left in the United States...
