Oconee Exploration

While the weather didn’t treat us to the forecast 80-degree weather, we still decided to set off on our planned a camping adventure in Oconee County for a few days. After a lazy Sunday morning, we drove to our first stop—Stumphouse Tunnel. It’s been a very long time since I last checked out the unfinished railroad tunnel and the Farmer had never seen it before. Daisy was not so excited about the super dark space, but kept pace with her people nonetheless. Outside the tunnel was an old train car that we checked out and Daisy thoroughly sniffed. Also interesting was how the water had smoothed out a path down the side of the hill.

Next stop was Oconee Station. A small historic site that I had yet to visit in the Upstate. Unfortunately the buildings weren’t open to view inside, but we enjoyed walking in the shade of the mature trees and looking at the construction of the blockhouse and brick homestead/trading post. We found some fingerprints in the handmade bricks. The access to the root cellar was super cool--right below the front porch with a trap door! Another thing we took note of was all the edible trees around the property. Pecans, junipers, and a new one to us that we asked the Ranger about. She called it an Osage Strawberry, but it looked like giant raspberries on a giant crape myrtle tree! We couldn’t find a clean fruit to sample on the ground, but it smelled berry-like. (photo below has immature fruit in it). Made us curious to learn more about the plant and see if it may have a place on our future homestead.

We then meandered our way to Devil’s Fork State Park and checked in to our campsite. We decided to try another walk-in campsite this trip as they promised the best views. While it was quite noisy until later in the evening as we were close to the public beach/boat ramp, the vista did not disappoint! While a tuckered out Daisy snoozed, we enjoyed the view while we set up camp and prepped dinner. After some difficult fire-starting experiences that last two time we went camping, I made some DIY firestarters out of dryer lint, leftover candles, and an egg carton. They worked like a charm!

The sunset was beautiful. We popped a pot of popcorn and savored the view. I'll let the photos speak for themselves

The sunrise was equally gorgeous:

After watching the sun crest the mountains, we took off to see Whitewater Falls along the NC/SC border. It has been rather dry lately, so the falls weren't as full as when we visited Dupont Forest earlier this summer, but it was still a lovely short trek.

On a whim, we decided to drive up to Cashiers, NC as we were so close. It was a cute little town. We stopped by their farm stand store and marveled at all the funky gourds and pumpkins. We also found ice cream at a funky new age-y shop that for some reason had goats outside. We got turned around one time and found a funny sign on a port-a-john. Ha!

Next we attempted to find Kings Creek Falls back down in SC. We followed the signage, turned onto the correct road, but after driving for a few miles and not finding a sign for a trailhead, I turned on my phone's GPS to discover we had driven into Georgia on a gravel road in the middle of nowhere! We checked out one trailhead that didn't have any signage about a waterfall, but found the Chattooga River. Back when we found some cell phone signal we learned that we were on the correct gravel road, but that the sign for Burrell’s Ford Campground was apparently the place we were supposed to park?? Maybe we will be able to find it another trip! Either way, Daisy loved hanging her head out the window as we drove through the woods.

On our way to find the falls we saw the fish hatchery sign, and decided to check it out real quick. Best 25 cents spent on fish food! We had a blast playing with the trout.

Since we had planned on eating lunch at unlocatable falls, we chose a random scenic overlook instead. Another vista of Lake Jocassee before we headed back to the campsite to rest and read.