Sunday May 4, 2014 Caesar's Head, Raven Creek Falls

It is another impossibly beautiful Sunday. I remember as a young girl that my friend, Karen and I would be relied upon by the teacher to have read the lesson and discuss it in the Sunday School class, while the boys who almost never came, would say, "The river and the woods are my church."  Now I am the renegade while the boys are the pillars of the community, men who sit in the church with their wives every Sunday while I visit the river and the woods for my church.

I take Hwy 190 West from Moore across I-85 to Hwy 25 in Greenville, then West on Hwy 11 and connect with Hwy 276 West which goes past Glassy Mtn and along the Blue Ridge Escarpment to Cleveland, South Carolina, past the Asbury Methodist Campground on the left, the Sunoco Station (with a hot food bar) and the little store that sells carvings of bears, past the entrance to Jones Gap and then the very curvy mountain road to the right (276) which leads to the park office, gift shop and restrooms to Caesar's Head on the left.
There you can go to the overlook, have a picnic, buy a  key chain of a medallion of  the U.S. Geological Survey here stating the elevation to be +3208 ft. above sea level,or a sparkling lizard bracelet as I did or a birthday gift for your daughter, as I did, of a yellow and black jeweled bird.

The Mountain Bridge Wilderness Area includes Jones Gap and Caesar's Head and trails that can take you all the way to Sassafras Mountain and even Oconee which is 80 miles to the West.
I take the red blazed trail to Raven Creek Falls.  First I must get back in the car and drive out of the park office to the left a quarter mile on the road. On the right is parking for a number of trails.  Parking is limited, but it is early in the morning.  Then I cross 276 on foot for the beginning of the trail which is a car wide gravel road going sharply down to a small water building.  From there, the trail is a well trodden, well marked footpath moving up and down through root stepped forests of hardwood, pine, mountain laurel and rhododendron.  In a sunny spot, I see a laurel in bloom and in another spot, a blooming violet colored mountain azalea.

There is a fork with a trail going off to the right with blue blazes. That is the Jones Gap Trail. Later, there is a trail going off to the left which is cordoned off, the Dismal Trail.

The ranger told me that there were 3 geocaches in the park.  I came upon one in the hollow of a tree containing a little notebook with the names of previous hikers who had found it and the palm sized rubber stamp of a "castle in the mountains" wrapped in a purple felt hand sewn purse.  There was no pen or pencil to leave my name, but I left my sea turtle key chain.  From now on, I will travel with pen and pencil, small notebook and trinkets to leave along the way.

The out and back trail ends at a shelter and lookout of the falls, the longest or highest in the state. For generations, the falls was owned and cared for by the Moore and Otis families who gave it to the State of South Carolina in 1981.