Hiking on the Palmetto Trail from the Alston Trailhead in South Carolina

November 15, 2023

On Monday (November 13), the weather was lovely and Bruce asked me what I wanted to do.

I said that I wanted to hike along the Palmetto Trail from the Alston Trailhead.

We geared up and rode the motorcycle to the Alston Trailhead.

The Palmetto Trail is mostly a rails-to-trails trail. It is gravel and in general very level.

Bruce stopped the motorcycle just short of the trestle bridge and asked if I wanted to take a picture. I said, yes and I took some pictures while on the back of the motorcycle.

We rode underneath the trestle and around the curve. The parking lot was on the left side of the road, up a steep hill. The parking lot was flat.

We laughed at the Reserved Parking sign and speculated why it was there.

We briefly looked around at the picnic area and viewed the tent camping sites from the top of the trail.

We were excited to walk across the trestle crossing the Broad River.

Did you catch that the doctor who walked across the train tracks had the same name as the reserved parking space doctor, except he was Sr. and the reserved parking space doctor was the III?

We also realized the turtles were on the remains of a trestle.

We took the ramp from the trail into Peak, South Carolina. We walked over to the town park and and read the Historical Marker.

This Historical Marker disagrees with the sign on the train trestle. One claims the Confederate Army destroyed the old trestle and the other claims the Federal troops did the destruction. Which is right?

We went back to the trail and continued hiking.

We came to another trestle, but it wasn’t nearly as impressive as the first trestle. We were careful to walk where the boards were fastened to the trestle after seeing some rotted boards and holes as we crossed over.

The trail didn’t continue straight after leaving the trestle. It turned and continued down a slope to the Crims Creek. We didn’t walk very far along side the creek since it was getting late.

We head back and along the way we meet several groups of people out walking their dogs on the trail.

I noticed boards attached to the metal beams along the trestle as we headed back to the motorcycle. The boards had metal post spaced about a foot apart sticking up from the top of the boards. We speculated the boards were held telegraph lines.

We got back to the motorcycle, geared up, and rode home to a waiting Nox. She was ready to go for a walk around the campground.