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My Greenville (/ˈɡriːnvɪl/; locally /ˈɡriːnvəl/)

Very nice! And I am looking forward to the toxic swamp.

I love Greenville's downtown waterfalls and hope to see more of them in future postings!

Nice photos! Looking forward to more!

Like me some Greenville!

Always appreciate your photo tours, HHNC :cheers:

Thanks for taking a look, guys. I still haven't had time to go through the other photos (the gutter people were out last night to give a quote and that took an hour), but here's a preview of what we were getting up to on Saturday morning...

https://hosting.photobucket.com/imag...720&fit=bounds

If you ever find yourself here, try the "Weasley," a ginger and lavender latte. It was quite the taste sensation.

Saturday, January 21st, 2023

Fountain Inn, SC: One-legged man at an ass-kicking contest

Greenville has a bevy of suburbs, some of which were established, independent towns long before Greenville began to boom and engulfed them. Of them, Greer has the largest downtown area, followed by Fountain Inn, Travelers Rest, and Simpsonville. Then you have Mauldin, which never really had a downtown area at all, plus a few others like Taylors that mainly existed only to serve the nearest mill, whose names live on as Greenville neighborhoods.

You'll note that two of these suburbs, Travelers Rest and Fountain Inn, have names that are quite poetic. And Fountain Inn, where we spent Saturday morning, actually is named after an inn that served stagecoach travelers, which had a fountain in front that was fed by a spring. A historical marker on the north side of town tells the story. Something else to note is that Greenville County is enormous, and some of these towns grew and thrived simply because it was too much of a burden to travel all day just to go to Greenville. When your needs could be served better by only traveling a couple of hours to someplace like Greer, Travelers Rest or Fountain Inn, you did so.

At any rate, here's Fountain Inn.

"tacos & bla bla bla" - lol. nice photos. i need to take a weekend trip up there, looks like a fun place to explore.

Nice tour of (1) modern abstraction & art (2) traditional Americana. :tup:
What's a silent disco?

I was wondering what a "silent disco" is too.

And I too love ghost signs!

Quote:

Originally Posted by sopas ej (Post 9848212)

I was wondering what a "silent disco" is too.

And I too love ghost signs!

I think it's where everyone is wearing head phones playing the same music. Not sure I really understand why it's a thing, but here we are. :shrug:

Quote:

Originally Posted by BnaBreaker (Post 9848243)

I think it's where everyone is wearing head phones playing the same music. Not sure I really understand why it's a thing, but here we are. :shrug:

This. Everyone gets a pair of glowing headphones and they rock out silently without the music echoing off all the nearby buildings.

Quote:

Originally Posted by hauntedheadnc (Post 9848278)

This. Everyone gets a pair of glowing headphones and they rock out silently without the music echoing off all the nearby buildings.

Makes sense, if no one wants to cause a ruckus.

Enjoyed the tour, thank you!
I admit, I've contributed to the warthog's shine...it's quite irresistible.

Saturday, January 21st, 2023

Greenville, SC: Nature is healing

Greenville's claim to fame is the Reedy River, an unremarkable little ditch of a waterway except for the way it tumbles dramatically down a sixty-foot waterfall in the heart of downtown. This makes Greenville one of the very few urban areas of any size in the world to boast such a natural amenity in its central business district.

Greenville is also an industrial city, and while it's now a hub for international business, boasting companies from Germany, France, Korea, and Japan with operations in the area, the city used to be known as the textile capital of the world. It was famous for its cloth, and to make cloth you need textile mills. To color cloth you need dyeing operations, and to keep it white you need bleacheries. And so Greenville had them all, and all of them generated a terrifying amount of sludge... That they all dumped directly into the Reedy River. Now, down at the south end of town was the Conestee (KONN-uh-stee) Mill, which powered itself via a hydroelectric dam across the Reedy, which created Lake Conestee. Over the years sedimentation, including decades of industrial sludge, has built up behind that dam, and the lake itself has shrunk dramatically to a small lake and a series of wetlands that are today preserved in a nature park.

This was mainly because it would cost many tens of millions of dollars to try to clean up the sludge. The better plan, it was decided, was to leave the sludge and shrinking lake alone, preserve it in a natural state, and let nature heal itself. There's good news and bad news in that approach. The good news is that nature is indeed healing itself. The wetlands at Lake Conestee Nature Preserve are home to a bevy of wildlife including migratory birds, beavers, deer, songbirds, and insects. The latter is not especially impressive though, as the rest of the city is also home to roaches big enough to star in a 1960's B-movie, and clouds of mosquitoes that are individually big enough enough to menace commercial aviation, to say nothing of when they get in a swarm. Also, on a personal note, my yard has a terrible problem with an invasive species of worm that produces a neurotoxic slime and are therefore dangerous to handle.

At any rate though, yes. Nature is healing. On the other hand, the sludge behind the dam at Lake Conestee is extremely toxic, full of heavy metals and carcinogens. If the dam ever fails it will pollute the river all the way to Lake Greenwood, two counties away, and will threaten the water supply for the city of Greenwood. Some analyses have said that a failure of the dam at Lake Conestee would be the worst environmental disaster in Upstate South Carolina since the Colonial Pipeline spilled more than a million gallons of diesel fuel into the Reedy River in 1996. And when it comes to the failure of the Conestee dam, it's worth noting that it was built in 1892 and was designed to last about fifty years. It is now over 130 years old.

It's probably nothing. Forget I brought it up. In the meantime, Lake Conestee Nature Preserve is a wonderful place to get back to nature.

And now, just for fun, here's dinner on...

Sunday, January 22nd, 2023

Kimchi

https://hosting.photobucket.com/imag...720&fit=bounds

I forget what this was called, but it had shrimp, scallops, and chicken in a brown sauce. Quite tasty.

https://hosting.photobucket.com/imag...720&fit=bounds

And here is where we ate said dinner, getting in before the supper rush. That's one of the only good things about having to eat supper around 4PM, since I have to go to bed early and get up so early for work.

https://hosting.photobucket.com/imag...720&fit=bounds

Quote:

Originally Posted by hauntedheadnc (Post 9847743)

https://hosting.photobucket.com/imag...720&fit=bounds

I can't think of any public parks I have seen with swing benches before, unless I did not notice them.

Great pics. Lake Conestee is very interesting; I like that you gave the background about it. I'm sure it looks a lot different in the summertime.

And hehe, whether you wanted to do a parody of or an homage to my LA thread, either way, I feel flattered!

Looking forward to more pics!

Loving the pics and the commentary! Does the toxic swamp smell badly, particularly in the summer?