Paris Mountain, Greenville, and Columbia

 

This morning we went for a walk along the French Broad River in Asheville. According to Wikipedia, it's one of the oldest rivers in the world, but how exactly do they know this? I told Travalon that if that's true, it's not a very ambitious river; the Colorado River created the Grand Canyon, but the French Broad had so much more time and it's done nothing with the landscape. Come on, French Broad! We did see a train go by on the other side of the river with a guy standing on the front of it. Here are a couple of photos from our walk. The first one is some sort of mural - Asheville is a very artsy town.

Then we drove to Paris Mountain State Park just outside of Greenville, South Carolina because Travalon read that it had waterfalls, boardwalks, and bridges. This was all true, and there was also a nearly vertical climb that we had to make while walking around Pleasant Lake, and I almost put my hand on a tiny lizard while making this climb... yet I didn't get any credit for vigorous activity. Come on, FitBit! Here are some photos.

We went to lunch with an old friend of Travalon's, and she told us there was a waterfall in downtown Greenville, but for some reason she didn't want to come with us. The waterfall was not a letdown! It's a helluva selling point for a city to have a waterfall right downtown. They also had flowers blooming at this time of year. Sometimes you have to ask yourself: why do I live in the North?

There were geese just hanging out above the falls.

Further up, there was a dam.

This little white duck was hanging out with a couple of mallard drakes.

Furman University is right by the waterfalls.

We didn't go on the bridge above the falls, but that must be a great view of them.

There were more falls further down.

These were some impressive tree roots.

This statue was right by the free parking (two hour limit) for the park.

Our next stop was Columbia, since we like to see state capitol buildings. At that hour it was closed, so we just walked around in. In my experience, these Southern capitols are often just museums anyway, and the real work of governance has been moved to more modern, soulless buildings. There are a lot of beautiful churches in Columbia too, like this Episcopal cathedral right across from the Capitol.

Here are some photos of the Capitol building.

And they had this monument of a palm tree. Why not? They are the "Palmetto State."

Then we had a very Southern dinner at a place called Lizard's Thicket. We passed it on the way to the Capitol and were intrigued both by the name and by the promise of "genuine Southern cooking." We both had catfish, and you got three vegetables with it, so I had black-eyed peas, collard greens, and fried okra, and dinner came with cornbread. I was pretty stuffed, but they had fried pound cake on the menu; however, they were out of pound cake, so Travalon and I split a slice of sweet potato pie. I'm not sure how healthy that meal was, but at least it had a lot of plant matter!

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