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Showing posts with label County Parks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label County Parks. Show all posts
Fernwood Nature Trail
The parks were packed last weekend with the spring weather. If you head down to Cleveland Park in the near future, be sure to take a stroll on the Fernwood Nature. The Sierra Club spent Saturday morning cleaning it up and adding mulch.
Distance from downtown Greenville: 0 miles.
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Distance from downtown Greenville: 0 miles.
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Falls Park
Falls Park is covered quite extensively by other local bloggers, as well as the local press (all of whom provide far better images than my point and shoot digital has provided), but I thought I’d post some things that don’t get mentioned very often.
Falls Park was non-existent until just a few years ago. The largest waterfall was covered by a bridge, so many people didn’t know it existed. The area around the falls was a home to vagrants and other assorted characters and was covered with trash. Fortunately though, with the help of the Carolina Foothills Garden club and commitment from local business and government leaders (who sometimes abused eminent domain law), it’s now a fantastic location, surrounded by several good restaurants.
The river itself, the Reedy, begins in Northern Greenville county, is fed by small streams flowing through local pastures and storm water run off from the city, eventually dumping into the Saluda. In other words, you really shouldn’t swim or wade in it unless you’re looking for a bad case of Giardia.The bank of the falls was originally home to Richard Pearis who married a Cherokee woman and was given several acres by her family. At the time of the Revolutionary War, he sided with the Tories so afterward the state of South Carolina confiscated his land. Paris Mountain was named after him, although they obviously got the spelling wrong.
Despite the crowds, there is a fair amount of wildlife located in the park, including ducks, chipmunks, and snakes. In fact, there are a lot of snakes. Once my sons and I spotted four within a half hour. We’ve seen garter snakes, banded water snakes and copperheads on many occasions. During the warmer months it’s rare not to spot one. On one occasion we spotted a crawfish (a.k.a. crawdad, crayfish) about four inches in length. When I picked it up we noticed that dozens of crawfish offspring were attached to her underside. So we put her down and she hightailed it back to the water. There are also a fair number of fish in the river, all of which appear to be blue gill. Above is a Great Blue Heron I photographed near the small footbridge that leads to Cleveland Park.
Across the river is a small cave that can be reached by hopping across the large boulders in the middle of the river. It’s a little tough getting back across though.Distance from downtown Greenville: 0 miles.
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Pleasant Ridge County Park
Pleasant Ridge County Park is a great little park in northern Greenville County that appears to be practically unknown. Every time I've been there, there has never been more than a handful of people in the park. 
The park contains both car camping sites and primitive camping sites, hiking trails, a small lake which is good for both swimming and fishing and four cabins for rent. It also the future home of Camp Spearhead. To the right of the picture above were a flock of Canadian Geese and Great Blue Heron. Unfortunately they were all a bit skittish and I was not able to get a photo.
Distance from downtown Greenville: 21 miles
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Lake Conestee Nature Park
Lake Conestee, located just outside the city limits, is currently being refurbished by local volunteers. It contains two miles of trails and boardwalks.
There are some very active beavers in the park. This video explains more about the park.
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Location: 34°46'41.68"N 82°21'37.13"W
Distance from downtown Greenville: 6.5 miles
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