We
took a 100 mile weekend trip in the RV trip to Cheraw State Park. The park is named after the nearby berg of
Cheraw. From the colonial to the civil
war, Cheraw was a thriving and
prosperous tobacco farming community. It
is also is the intra-state sister city to Georgetown
SC. After Sherman had razed Charleston, Georgetown
sc ( which is 50 miles north of Charlseton on the coast ( and ten miles south
of us)) figured it was next to be burned; so it sent all its public records to
Cheraw, SC for safekeeping (you know--
land deeds and property titles, marriage, death and, birth records, etc.)
Sure enough Sherman bypassed Georgetown, headed west to Columbia, SC
then went north to burn Cheraw to the ground.
After the civil war, many white landowners returned to Georgetown to find their homes and land
occupied by blacks and ner’- do-well whites.
The former owners had no way to evict the squatters because they
couldn’t prove they ever owned the property in the first place.
We
didn’t spend much time in the town of Cheraw. For one thing, we arrived on a Sunday, and like most Southern
cities, half the businesses close their doors on Sunday. Then too the half that might have stayed open
were closed down and abandoned. Most
small southern towns were dependent upon fishing, or agriculture, or
manufacturing. When manufacturing moved
out of the US,
there was little for non-farmer or fishermen to do but pack up and move out of state to find work. It’s kinda sad going through once proud old towns with their sagging-porches, and empty
paint-peeling mansions.
Our
real destination in the area was Cheraw
State Park. The park surrounds a lake. The northern side is fully developed with
public recreational facilities including an 18 hole golf course. The first order of business for Bruce, after arriving at Cheraw State Park,
was a round of eighteen holes of golf.
It's hard to imagine a more beautiful place to golf. The course is laid out in
a long needle pine forest. Most of the fairways overlook Lake Cheraw.
There are no houses along the greens, and what buildings there are, are designed
to look like log cabins. It was easy to imagine that we were in a meadow in the
forest.
The serenity of the setting seemed to help Bruce's game.
He played well on almost every hole.
Cheraw is a very big lake. The eastern end of it is bound by a man-made
dam with a bridge over it that allows one to walk across from the camp ground
on the south shore to the public recreation facilities of north shore. The western end is a Pond Cypress Tree swamp. On Monday morning, BJ and I rented
a double sit-upon kayak for a paddle through the western portion of the lake.
The thing is Bruce only brought one pair of pants
for camping … everything else he packed was country club attire for golf. When we got to the kayak rental office, we
found that all they had available were sit-a-top self bailers, which meant he
would be sitting in water and wearing wet clothes for the rest of the day. A 300 lb female state park ranger lumbered
out of the ranger’s office and rode a golf cart the 30 meters down to the kayak
equipment shack to issue us our gear.
She didn’t have a clue what she was doing, and didn’t know a thing about
how to assemble the gear. (She actually
gave Bruce a child’s life jacket to wear.) Now Bruce is not known for his anger
management skills and he completely lost it.
Even though the kayaking had been my main planned objective for the trip,
I almost canceled the entire exercise.
I can deal with the ideas of paddling through a swamp filled with
alligators, cotton mouth snake, and protective nesting osprey, but having BJ
behind me in a boat when he was throwing a tantrum… that is scary!
Eventually he calmed down and we were off. It was worth it.
The swamp is magical... almost mystical in nature.
The reflections were incredible.
There were even carnivorous pitcher plants
clinging to the base of the cypress knees. (By the way carnivorous plants also grow near
where I live in South Carolina. Who would have thought I would find something
so exotic growing in my own back yard?)
That afternoon the adventure continued. Arriving back at the RV after the kayak, BJ
shed his wet jeans and t shirt for his fancy (but dry) golf attire.
Kat was happy to see us and greeted us at the door.
I
didn’t want to spend the rest of the day sitting around, so we decided to take
a hike down a graded dirt logging road that leads through the southern side of
the state forest. We were about four miles
in from nowhere in these very isolated woods when we see a heavily muscled black male, in full fatigue
gear, with a loaded backpack, jogging
towards us carrying two 5 gallon (obviously full) gasoline tanks ( one in each
hand). The guy was huge… he looked like
a cross between Hulk Hogan and a character out of “Deliverance.” (And here’s Bruce in his country club attire
looking like Billy Crystal, in “City Slickers”). The ‘soldier’ explained was preparing for a
military operation (para-military no doubt.) He said that he’d just come from
his bivouac camp and he’d catch up with us on the way back (Gulp… time to find
a different route home). In retrospect
the whole interaction was very funny. After
all, we go camping rather than staying at resort hotels because we want to
experience a wider view of society, and it certainly did make for some good stories
to tell our neighbors later that week.
