Marks Photo Travels - now at marksphototravels.blogspot.com!

For quite a while, I've wanted a change the website name to one that better describes the purpose of this blog: taking photos of waterfalls, old buildings, cemeteries, and anything else I find interesting in the Upstate of South Carolina, Western North Carolina, and surrounding areas. And now I've gone and done it! This blog and all its posts have moved to  marksphototravels.blogspot.com . All future updates will be posted there. But because so many sites have links posts to the old website name, markemark4.blogspot.com , I have left behind a stub page for each post with a link directing you to the post's new location. Please adjust your bookmarks accordingly! Thank you, dear readers, and see you over at marksphototravels.blogspot.com ! And apologies for any inconvenience! Update: It helps if the redirect links actually work!

A few weeks ago, I went out to Rocky Bottom to visit the Eastatoe Creek Heritage Preserve . I had wanted to find a path down to the creek so I could explore and see if I could some waterfalls. I didn't find a path, even after I had been studying old aerial maps to find logging roads, and I wanted to try one more time. Once again I parked in the Foothills Trail parking access area. I expected the parking access to empty like last time, but to my surprise it wasn't. I hiked down the road to where a satellite view showed what may have been some old logging roads, but I found nothing but forest. So I went back to my car and parked near the gate to the trailhead for the Eastatoe Creek Heritage Preserve. These photos are from my most recent visit: I found a spot where I thought an old logging road may have once branched off from the trail. If there was a logging road, it didn't go far. I did find an old rusting mattress box spring and some old cans of J ohnson's Gl...

Recently, officials with the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources  announced the opening of a new Wildlife Management Area, the 1757 acre Tall Pines Wildlife Management Area located in northern Greenville County. The area is now open for hunting, fishing, and hiking. Part of new WMA runs along the South Saluda River, with one parking access off Moody Bridge Road  near Tall Pines Lake. The South Carolina DNR has produced a helpful PDF map of the WMA. While I was adding  the area to OpenStreetMap , I could see some some lakes, disused agricultural fields, old logging roads that all looked interesting, but not a high priority to visit. That changed when I examined a topo map from 1961, and found an old church and a cemetery located in the new WMA. A recent satellite view showed nothing there but trees... which made me highly curious to know what, if anything, remained. Last Wednesday, I met up with Tom Taylor at the Moody Bridge Road access area to see what, if...