Harvest Hope and Beauty Trail

South Carolina – Tuesday, April 23

I started today with a grocery shopping trip for the Harvest Hope Food Bank that’s in Florence. I got staples like cereal and oatmeal, peanut butter, pasta and sauce, rice, canned veggies, tuna and canned chicken. I finally found them (after a phone call – they were tucked away behind a farmer’s market) and unloaded the groceries. They weigh all their incoming food, and mine came to 39 pounds. The volunteer at the food bank told me they serve a lot of counties, and pass food out to nearly 80 different food pantries, many of which are located in churches.

Then I wanted to find the older neighborhoods of Florence which are part of The Beauty Trail, which highlights flowering trees, gardens and flower beds, and is maintained by the Rotary Club, which has been doing this since 1945. I think it’s the only trail of this sort that the Rotary Club promotes. There’s about 12 miles of streets on this “trail” so I figured it would make for some pretty good walking. But when I found one of the main streets, there were no sidewalks, so I began to wonder if it was just a driving route. I followed it a bit, and then I came to a small neighborhood with quiet streets that had one narrow lane going each direction, and it turned out to be a good walking place. The road seemed like a wide sidewalk, and with barely any traffic and very low speed limits, and Tula and I covered nearly 3 miles. While it was pretty, I’m not sure there was anything more spectacular there than many of the other places I’ve walked this spring. I’m guessing what makes this really special is when the dogwoods and cherry trees are blossoming, and that time has come and gone. I drove around a little more, and then came to the area I was looking for on the Beauty Trail – a very quiet neighborhood with long blocks of streets with names like Camellia, Azalea, Oleander, Iris, Wisteria, and… Juanita. I walked up and down all the streets and there were indeed a lot of very pretty homes and landscaping (and numerous gardeners out working!) It was peaceful and pretty, and it smelled good, and I covered another 4 miles before I knew it! It was such a pleasant afternoon.

Then I stopped at Jimmy Johns for a sub, and headed east to Myrtle Beach State Park to see if they had any mid-week campsites available. And they did – so I was able to camp again, just a stone’s throw away from the Atlantic Ocean. Tula and I took a walk and explored our surroundings, and the trees and vegetation along the shore are oddly shaped – the land side is green and full, but the ocean side is stunted due to the wind and salt spray. It’s nice to be so close to the water that I can hear the waves from my campsite.