It was before sunrise - about 7:30 a.m. - when I awoke to the sound of a coyote way off in the distance. This howl always sets off every dog in a five mile radius. Among this canid concert was what sounded like an emergency, as two fire trucks went by on the road beside my woods. I guessed all of this was my cue to get going. I went through the pack up, and took one last shot of the dry spot. It always looks like a grave to me. I do find it fascinating how the moisture directly under my sleeping bag (the dryness is in the exact outline of the bag) has evaporated off during the night...
Technically, evaporation moves upwards, but of course the under-tarp was right on top of the ground. So the air must have been very dry; dry enough to pull the moisture out from under the sides. The ambient heat from my body is enough (being warmer than the ground and the air) to cause that evaporation. This phenomenon would come in handy in a couple of days.
I still find it amazing that my shelter, clothes, and everything else I need to survive fit in one pack...
Not so Saggy when it's full.
The first order of business was to make one last stop at Starbucks for coffee and a good look at my route online. If I could, I wanted to also publish a post. I got everything done, but left at 1:30 p.m., a little later than I'd planned. Thirteen miles is at least four hours of walking. It took well over an hour just to get downtown and there wasn't much to photograph along the way...
English Ivy paints trees.a
I crossed over a small river and climbed the hill after it, finally finding myself in downtown Spartanburg...
Outside the Artist Co-op.
In the next few days I would learn that quite a few corporations have major headquarters and production facilities in the northern part of South Carolina. My first observation of this was the Coca Cola Bottling Company...
This time of year is not a flattering season for towns in the South. With the leafless hardwoods, the dead leaves on the ground, the brown grass and brownish orange rivers, it is a picture painted in drab. I kept finding myself having to imagine what these towns must look like in the summer. Also, I always come into a town from its outskirts, and more often than not, these areas are a bit run down. They are where the warehouses, liquor stores, train tracks, public works, low income housing and mobile home parks are. Combine all of these things with the many businesses that are closed, retail spaces for sale, and the occasional burnt-out building or house on the way downtown, and the first impressions are...not the best. Downtown Spartanburg was like that on this day.
All the while, there were photo-worthy scenes; places that the town took pride in and some great house architecture...
Clock tower with the wrong time. As I would discover,
Spartanburg was not alone in this clock tower oversight.
Sorry for the blurry picture of the Daniel Morgan Monument. He may have been a bit unfocused
as a man, but my failure to just take the shot again was not his fault.
South Carolina was one of the original thirteen colonies in America. Maine had not even separated from Massachusetts by the late 1700's. South Carolina had an important role to play in defeating the British as they lost hold of the North and focused their attacks on the Southern Regions. In particular, this northern part of the state has a rich legacy in Revolutionary War History.
And HEY!, I had no idea that Denny's corporate headquarters was located here...
Not exactly the most beautiful corporate high rise, but respectable all the same.
I was all the more glad to have eaten at one of their restaurants a couple days earlier.
Sad. The Spark seemed to indicate that she might have run away.
That would be preferable to the alternative.
I looked for the sign in this yard with statistics on child sexual abuse by Catholic Church clergy,
but was unable to locate it. This gives some idea...
The Catholic Church has come under severe scrutiny and criticism as the scandal of sexual abuse by members of the clergy continues to roil the institution. Only this year, Pope Francis has already had to accept the resignations of three American bishops while a Pennsylvania priest was found guilty last week of sexually abusing three boys at a Honduran orphanage.
The numbers behind the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal are only climbing as more victims come forward.
3,400 sexual abuse cases
That’s how many credible cases of abuse had been referred to the Vatican from 2004 to 2014, according to the Vatican’s U.N. ambassador in Geneva, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi. There were an estimated 410,000 Catholic priests around the world in 2014, the Catholic News Service reported.
2,572 priests sentenced to a lifetime of penance
Another 848 over the last decade, had been defrocked, according to Tomasi. The others were sentenced to penance and other mild religious sentences.
Pope Benedict XVI defrocked 384 priests in 2 years
The former Pope, who resigned in 2013, essentially fired 384 of those priests in the last two years of his pontificate.
Majority of priests’ victims were male
American Catholic priests were shown to have a distinct pattern of sexual abuse, with 64 percent of all allegations of abuse made against a priest by a male only, according to a detailed report by the John Jay Institute investigating child abuse in the Catholic Church from 1950 to 2002. Those males were young: more than 85 percent of them were 8 to 10 years old.
$150,747,387
That’s how much the Catholic Church in the U.S. spent between July 2013 and June 2014 on costs “related to child protection efforts and to allegations of clergy sexual abuse of minors…” according to an annual survey by Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA).
[Vocativ.com]
I tend to think that life ruiners are judged only by the eye of the beholder. Making a political statement publicly by fusing it with religious morality, through a tax exempt institution, is going too far, in my opinion; especially in "the town square" (as it were). After all, we do have a civil law system and ways to affect and change those laws. It's called a "government by the people...and for the people." Attempting to override the democratic process with the guilt-tripping, meme-studded view of one single organization is un-American. It is not exactly what was imagined as "free speech." It is more like "shove it down their throats by sticking it in their eyes" speech. Despite the many wonderful things the Catholic Church does worldwide, I believe this purposefully offensive and local public display by this particular church is not only in bad taste, but ethically suspect...
There were some really neat houses in town and a nice college. This first one stood out as a marvel of porch design, with an entryway flanked by double columns...
Mark Twain relaxing in bronze.
Fountains on glass.
The cone-shapes at the top on either side are truly emblematic of this part of the country.
They are evergreen magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora) seed pods--what the pod
looks like after seeds have fallen.
I found that in the Pacific Northwest these same shapes adorn much of architecture there as well. In the Northeast there are only deciduous magnolias, which bloom and drop their petals before their leaves arrive in spring and lose those leaves in the fall. This campus and the two towns I would walk through in the next few days had a large number of these perennial magnolias. One of the most beautiful, fragrant and ancient flowering trees, magnolias are a worthy symbol for stability and elegance.
The two large green-leaved trees in this photo are magnolias.
A little fixer-upper?
I liked the pastel color of this business.
Tracks in the snow.
Another brown river. It is a major one too, but for the life of me I couldn't find the name of it.
A local veterinary hospital.
It had taken almost three hours just to walk the length of Spartanburg, and I still had five miles to go as I reached the eastern edge of town. There was a McDonald's there and I stopped in as the sun neared the horizon behind me. I spent a precious three dollars on a cheeseburger and small drink and got online to check for sleep spots near Cowpens. I was already pretty tuckered out and thought that I might even find a place to sleep along the way. I walked back out at sunset and started northeast toward Cowpens again, still following Route 29...
A look back toward the west.
Usually I am not able to take night photos of scenery, because I lack a tripod
and they always end up blurry. But as I passed this dam, I was able to rest the camera
on the railing of a bridge. The camera takes beautiful shots at night when it is steady.
The sidewalks and road shoulder ended. After an hour of alternately walking variously on snow, grass, mud and slush, and then occasionally on the pavement itself when no cars were coming, I began to scout for sleep spots instinctually. Unfortunately, I was in a valley region on the north side of some small mountains, so there was still a lot of snow in the woods. I pressed on.
The trash started to pile up on the side of the road after another forty five minutes. Although this was not a pleasant sight, it was a welcome one. It meant civilization was just ahead. At around 7:30 p.m. I strolled into Cowpens, weary but happy to have made it in one day...
I was tired and really just wanted to sleep. After passing through town, I rested at a Valero and checked out my laptop for the screenshot of the area. Just ahead, about a quarter mile, were some wooded areas. I set off to check them out. Sure enough, between two houses, and across from a large town garage I saw thick spruce trees right beside me at the edge of the road. When traffic was clear, I plowed through them.
There, was a thin area that ran parallel to the road. It was free of ice and fairly well-blocked from the view of the road by the spruce trees. It wasn't ideal, but it was better than what I'd imagined I'd have to deal with. I thought I'd be clearing snow away from a spot and was delighted not to have to do that. The small area I found looked dark and wet, but when I touched the leaves on the ground, they were relatively dry. Apparently, the sun had done some work over the last day. Also, the fact that there was little snow where I wanted to put up the tent indicated that it might be good for being partially sheltered from the rain--should I have to stay the next night...
A picture taken facing towards the road, which was only about fifteen feet beyond.
Cars were passing by in both directions, but the traffic was thinning out quickly. That is the nice thing about getting past 8:00 p.m. Roads become much less busy. And this road was Route 29 itself; a fairly major highway.
I climbed into the tent and then into the sleeping bag, turned on my iPod, and listened to the second Terence McKenna talk that I'd downloaded the day before, falling asleep shortly after the mid point of his lecture.
Cowpens Sleep Spot.
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