Right after the start of the new school year, I had the opportunity to hoof it down to Orlando for a day at Universal Studios with my family.  After going way too many times in 2020, I haven’t been back much since, so it was good to get back into the parks, even if for only a day.

Before school resumed, I found myself driving all over South Carolina to dine with an array of beauties.  That also provided ample opportunity to explore the highways and byways of my beloved State.

There is a beautiful drive through the countryside between my home of Lamar, South Carolina, and I-95, which GPS always recommends when I head to the Charleston/Mount Pleasant region of South Carolina.  It winds south of town on US-401 to the unincorporated community of Elliott, South Carolina, then veers off onto SC-527 for several miles before hitting I-95 South.  There’s a beautiful old church in Elliott with stained glass windows; across from it is a postage stamp-sized post office, proudly flying its American Flag on a mostly empty street corner.

Along SC-527 is an abandoned middle school, overgrown with weeds and brambles.  While I’m sure there is nothing there now but raccoons and spiders, I’d like to poke around in those remains.  I also wonder what it was like attending classes at this brick-and-concrete edifice in the middle of corn fields in a remote corner of the State, and what devastating depopulation had to occur for a school to find itself, empty and abandoned, so far from anything.  What must it be like for a school to die?  If a school dies, it means the community has already died much earlier.

I’ve come to enjoy these little trips.  There’s a great deal to see, and I enjoy the quiet drives.  After one (quite successful—fingers crossed!) excursion to Summerville, I found myself driving back during a massive storm.  Fortunately, the driving was easy, but the lightning was terrific—blasting out in huge bursts that turned night into day.  I was listening to A Flock of Seagull’s hit “I Ran,” and the lightning would sometimes hit in time with the constantly moving synthesizer part, creating a cinematic effect that could never be duplicated.

My advice to readers:  hit the road!

With that, here is 1 September 2022’s “TBT: Road Trip!“:

Note—when I first scheduled this post, I was still scheduled to go to Florida.  Due to The Virus afflicting one of my girlfriend’s sisters, we’ve postponed that trip.  So, instead, we’re going to do a little road-tripping around South Carolina this weekend.  We’ll be getting down to Florida in December, though, so while my return to Florida is delayed, I’m looking forward to visiting down there later this year.  Just pray for my sweet girlfriend—while we will have fun this weekend, I know she is heartbroken that she won’t get to see her family as planned.  —TPP

Tomorrow after school I’ll be riding down with my girlfriend to visit with her family in Florida.  After The Year of Universal Studios back in 2020, I haven’t made it back down that way in awhile, and I’m looking forward to a few days over Labor Day weekend in sunny central Florida.

We’ll be taking the Interstate Highway System most of the way, and I doubt there’ll be many backroads, but I’ve always enjoyed cruising the less-traveled pathways to see what little bits of Americana are out there, waiting to be discovered.  There’s still plenty of what John Derbyshire calls the “old, weird America” out there, and I love finding it (and, perhaps, living in it!).

Well, even if we aren’t hitting many backroads, I’m excited to be out and about on another footloose adventure!

With that, here is 22 July 2020’s “Road Trip!“:

Your portly is hitting the road for sunny (and humid) Florida for a few days at Universal Studios (more details on that tomorrow).  I’m convoying down in my 2017 Nissan Versa Note with my girl and my younger brother and his family, with plans to rendezvous with our older brother and his girlfriend at the airport in Orlando.

I am very much a homebody by nature, which has come in handy during The Age of The Virus.  That said, I’ve tried to get out more over the past year and see more of my great State, South Carolina, as my various festival trips from last fall indicate.  I’ve also developed quite a fondness for taking the back roads, though my desire to get where I’m going usually overrides the romance of driving down barely-maintained rural routes.

Recently, I did take an extended back path from Columbia to Aiken, South Carolina.  I was willing to add twenty minutes to my drive to see some nature.  The route took me through a forgotten triangle of countryside, bounded by I-20 to the east and north and I-26 to the west (there’s no “bottom” to the triangle, so it’s more of an right angle).  That took me through Pelion and New Holland, the latter of which was largely cattle ranches and huge, open swaths of green pastures.

At one point on that drive, I reached a fork:  straight was a purely dirt road, right was a barely-paved surface that continued the State road on which I found myself.  Not wanting to trespass inadvertently, I stuck to my GPS-mandated trail and eventually got back onto real surface roads.

Taking back roads is slower (and potentially more dangerous, especially at night), but it gives one an opportunity to see sights few others ever see.  I always wonder, too, what it’s like to live way out in the country.  I live in a small town that’s twenty or thirty minutes from most major amenities, but we have a grocery store, a Family Dollar, and a Dollar General in town—enough to get by in a pinch.  Pizza is a forty-minute round trip, but I can always just pick up a Red Baron at The Pig.

But places like New Holland are way far out.  What do you do for supplies?  Do you make weekly (or monthly) supply runs?  Do you just resign yourself to spending a ton of money on gas?  For that matter, where do you get gas?

These aren’t meant to be the snarky observations of a doughy city slicker.  Far from it.  I’m just genuinely curious what the real rural life is like.

Another thought always occurs to me when driving through farmland and small towns:  what would it be like to traipse across this area on foot?  It’s impractical (and incredibly dangerous) here in rural South Carolina, but people do it all the time:  a perennial sight is a disheveled character (often in pajama bottoms and a t-shirt) walking with a couple of yellow plastic bags from Dollar General.  I spotted one such character on that drive.  I didn’t hit the next Dollar General for miles.  Had he visited that location?  Was there another one, just off the road, that I missed?  Or had he really walked miles and miles to pick up some sundries?  I suspect he had.

Today it’s all Interstates and city driving, so nothing too off-the-beaten path (barring some major traffic jam or the like).  It’s not the most exciting driving, but at least I’ll have someone riding with me.  We’ll also make the obligatory Cracker Barrel stop at some point, hopefully for a filling Uncle Herschel’s (I like the eight-ounce hamburger steak myself).

See you on the other side, Portly Fans.

Happy Trails,

—TPP