Travel: Summer Drive

Photo gallery: 

Summer Drive

With only two lanes of traffic, and abundant scenery and history all along the way, Cherokee Foothills Scenic Highway 11 follows the former footpaths and cart trails of Cherokee Indians and colonial fur traders. Today, it gives views of a landscape that natives aptly described as “the Great Blue Hills of God.”

Driving at least part of the 130-mile route is a particular treat in summer, when strawberry fields are bursting with plump berries, the air is sweet with mint and honeysuckle, and the rivers run cool and deep.

When the teenage boy walked up and eyed the slippery rock face made smooth with algae and the current of mountain water going downhill, well, that’s when the show began. It was mid-morning on a sweet, early summer day at the shoals, and up until then there’d been only quiet sunbathing and wading by the small crowd gathered there.

Then, without a fuss, the kid in cut-off shorts took on the wet slope standing up, all the way down, surfer-style—even spinning around backwards for part of the ride, slipping past the boulders and trees that line one side of Little Eastatoe Creek, the sunbathers on the other. He didn’t fall. He didn’t even make it look like it hurt. (Other sliders—most who make the ride sitting down or on their stomachs—confirm that a few scratches and bruises are usually the worst of any damage.)

His stunt was simply part of the June scenery at Long Shoals Wayside Park, a few miles east of Keowee-Toxaway State Park, where everyone from miles around knows that just beyond the woods at the parking lot’s edge is a naturally formed waterslide. A harbinger of summer, the sliding possibilities and sights there are just some of the wonders found along this Upstate arc of Old Highway 11, the Cherokee Foothills Scenic Highway.

Pick of the Trip

Not far into the drive along Highway 11 (when beginning our trip by exiting I-85 in Gaffney), we started noticing clump after clump of wild pink roses spilling over the fence lines that bordered the rural highway, and peach orchards just beyond. Rounding a curve, we saw Strawberry Hill USA, the horizon-to-horizon view of rolling hillsides around Cooley’s open-air fruit market, the whole scene dotted and strung with American flags. We pulled in to the nearly full parking lot, and a couple minutes later I was sitting in a white-painted rocking chair under the wide covered porch, sipping a peach ice drink (they have strawberry ice drinks, too, both made simply with fresh fruit blended with ice). From the porch is a terrific distant view of the dozens of field workers moving about like bees, stacking buckets piled high with red berries into the beds of farm trucks. A woman working offered some insider fruit info—the sweetest strawberries usually grow earliest in the season. And, while the height of peach season is July, white peaches ripen as late as October.

Hook, Line, and Sinker

It’s those off-the-main-road oddities that make road trips so amusing. And the small Pineyside Carp Lake signs had intrigued us, so we turned off of Highway 11 for a few miles, eventually following a dirt road past houses and down a hill to a square pond the size of a football field with tall lamp posts all around.

We met Chris Black, who explained that since he was 8 or 9, he’d been taking part in local “carp derbies” on weekends, fishing tournaments held at night at stocked ponds. Now he brings his own young family along. Mr. Black and his son were pouring ingredients for the bait in a big plastic bucket just then—two boxes of instant rice, two bottles of ketchup, and a few squirts from a tube of butternut flavoring. He’d let all that sit awhile and then form the sweet mush into balls that he’d put on the fishing hook. “Carp like a sweet bait,” he explained.

Highway 11 has long been revered for its water features. We climbed the roads of popular Table Rock State Park, stopping at the wildlife center and the swimming beach, before heading over to Aunt Sue’s Country Corner to join the crowds in a rite of summer by sitting a spell on the porch with cones of turtle ice cream and listening to the banjo picker who, by guests’ requests, played “Dueling Banjos” twice within 20 minutes.

Field & Stream

Our next diversion was the short side trip up SC-25/Old 25 to Callahan Mountain Road to see the Poinsett Bridge (built in 1820), a six-mile round trip that also takes you past the totem pole and entrance area to the 1950s-looking Boy Scout camp, Camp Old Indian. The bridge is tucked into the cool woods, where we followed the path down to gurgling Little Gap Creek below to get a view looking up at the mossy stones and Gothic arches of the 189-year-old span and to wonder about the people who first built and used it. The bridge was once a link in State Road, which led from Charleston to the North Carolina mountains, and is named for Joel R. Poinsett, who later became famous for introducing the poinsettia to South Carolina.

We’d brought along our small hound, Sparky, for the station-wagon adventure. It turned out that Highway 11 was an easy place to travel with a pet, with plenty of short-hike possibilities and few over-crowded spots. (He especially liked the stops where splashing was possible.) I walked awhile along the mossy boulders and smooth stones of Middle Saluda’s riverbed, watching the water splash and fall.

And we turned down Eastatoe Creek Road, where three men were fishing for rainbow trout at a favorite spot, and each had caught some for the stringer. Still they’d keep fishing awhile at that bend in the rural road near an empty, but tidy, white-painted cabin. And we would keep driving, too, to see what lay ahead.

Pause-Worthy Pitstops

Cowpens National Battlefield
4001 Chesnee Highway, Gaffney,
(864) 461-2828, www.nps.gov/cowp

J.E. Cooley Peach Farms & Strawberry Hill USA
3097 SC-11, Chesnee,
(864) 461-7225, www.strawberryhillusa.com

Poinsett Bridge
Callahan Mountain Road, Lyman,
(803) 734-3893, www.discoversouthcarolina.com/products/25400.aspx

Campbell’s Covered Bridge
within five miles of SC-11 at Gowensville,
www.discoversouthcarolina.com/products/1624.aspx

Little Coffee Pot Café
2490 North SC-25, Travelers Rest,
(864) 834-2221

Jones Gap, Table Rock, Caesars Head, Keowee-Toxaway state parks
www.southcarolinaparks.com

Aunt Sue’s Country Corner
107 Country Creek Drive, Pickens,
(864) 878-4366, www.auntsues.com

Victoria Valley Vineyards
1360 South Saluda Road, Cleveland,
(864) 878-5307, www.victoriavalleyvineyards.com

Jocassee Charters, pontoon boat tours
(864) 350-9056, www.jocasseecharters.com

Bantam Chef, fried chicken and milkshakes
113 West Main Street, Walhalla,
(864) 638-5995

Big Al’s BBQ
Tokeena Crossroads, intersection of SC-59 and SC-24

Hagood Mill
off SC-178 at 138 Hagood Mill Road, Pickens,
(864) 898-2936, www.co.pickens.sc.us/culturalcommission

National Scenic Byways Program
Cherokee Foothills Scenic Highway,
www.byways.org/explore/byways/2161