"Water Eyes of the Hills" or Land of Springs is the meaning of the Cherokee Word for this beautiful park on the Escarpment of the Blue Ridge Mountains and the edge of the Georgia line. On this Memorial Day on my way to Decatur to stay with Mathew and Martin, I detoured off I-85 at Exit 1 onto the Cherokee Foothills Hwy (11) for 20 miles to Walhalla, heaven of the Gods. Soon you can see the ascending layers of mountains: indigo, cobalt and cerulean, then on to Hwy 28 to Mountain Rest and right onto 107 for 2 miles, past the Last Chance Bar and Cuzzins Store with Bluegrass Saturday night. The Park is 2 miles on the right. Enter through a tunnel of blooming pink and white Mountain Laurel. The park gives me the feel of having been lost in the 40's, which was when it was built by the CCC. There are 20 cabins with mountain stone foundations. Some are log cabins. Six are on the edge of the lake where there is fishing and swimming with a life guard on a ladder out on a floating dock.
I take the short hike around the lake. There are many trails here. The lake trail has two board walks over swampy places and here again is the blooming mountain laurel everywhere.
I leave back down the mountain past the Stumphouse Ranger Station in another part of the Sumter National Forrest and through Walhalla, the county courthouse with a statue of a Conferate States Of America soldier in the median of the main street. Nearby is the Dog House Tavern, Bottoms Up Liquor Store and the enticing Palmetto Sweets and Company Bakery and Cafe where I can see white tablecloths through the windows. It is in actuality, a charming village with old houses and gigantic blooming magnolias reaching the clouds. The first settlers who named the town for all of its beauty must have felt they were indeed in Walhalla, the Norse heaven.
Outside of town, I pass Critter Road and East Bear Swamp and on the radio I hear Barack Obama say:
God Bless the Fallen
God Bless those in Uniform
God Bless America.
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