Historic Travelers Rest 200 years old

I remember very clearly back about three years ago when Bob and I were  exploring this area for the first time.   It was afternoon and we had been driving all day and were coming down out of the mountains and saw a sign for Travelers Rest.   I assumed it was a state road side rest stop like we had often seen in our travels.  These rest stops are large and well marked.  I looked and looked and couldn’t find it and I said to Bob “I don’t know how we missed this rest stop.”  It wasn’t until much later that I realized Travelers Rest was a town and not a rest stop.  Little did I know that we had just driven by our future home town. 

Bob and I attended the Travelers Rest Fall Festival and bicentianl celebration on Saturday.  Travelers Rest stretches to the NC border. 

From the Travelers Rest Web Site

Where the travelers rested

In the early 1800’s, settlers in Conestoga wagons (large covered wagons pulled by four to six horses) were passing through what was to become Travelers Rest, South Carolina in increasing numbers and roads were becoming more common. “Drovers” herded horses, mules, cattle, sheep, and hogs from Kentucky and Tennessee to markets in South Carolina.¹ 

(Fay comment from information in the Greenville paper: Drovers came from NC, Tennessee and Kentucky and brought cattle, pigs, horses and wild turkeys.  Led by drovers down the mountain trails … they could travel, depending on the animal, anwhere from 5 (for turkeys) to 10 (for pigs) miles a day.  I have to honestly say I never thought about how fast a wild turkey walked!)All these travelers needed places to rest along their long journeys and stores and taverns sprouted up to meet their needs. One of these spots was north of the modern day Travelers Rest, on what is now highway 25, where a Mr. and Mrs. William Bishop operated an inn where the drovers could sleep indoors while their animals were kept in a nearby pen.  Stopovers such as this gave rise to the colorful, if not too imaginative, name of Travelers Rest.

 

If once is good, twice must be better

Travelers Rest has the notable distinction of achieving incorporation as a city twice in its history (1891 and 1959). Although records are a bit limited on the subject, residents of Travelers Rest did, in fact, apply to the state government in 1891 to be incorporated as a bona fide governmental entity.³ The following act from December 23, 1891 is on file in the Columbia statehouse, incorporating Travelers Rest for a period of thirty years:

Statutes of South Carolina Vol. XX, pages 1373-74

An Act to Incorporate the Town of Travelers Rest in Greenville County

Section 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the State of South Carolina, now met and sitting in General Assembly, and by authority of the same, That (sic) all citizens of the United States who now are, or who may hereafter be, inhabitants of the town of Traveler’s (sic) Rest, in Greenville County, shall be deemed, and are hereby declared to be, a body politic and corporate; and that said town shall be known by the name of Traveler’s (sic) Rest, and the limits shall extend one-half mile in every direction from a point midway between the two depots of the Carolina, Knoxville, and Western Railway company, so that the limits shall form a circle.⁴

In 1959, the 2500 residents of Travelers Rest held an election and sent a request to the Secretary of State, O. Frank Thornton, petitioning for a second incorporation. Mr. Lehman Moseley received the following letter:

“We do have information that Travelers Rest was incorporated by a special act December 23, 1891, for a period of 30 years. The time ran out and insofar as our records show, there is nothing to prevent the incorporation of a town using the name Travelers Rest.

A little humor

My high school friend Marie sent me this cartoon.  If you have any cute life part two cartoons or jokes pass them along and I will post them or put them in as a comment on the blog.

Town Festivals

Last weekend we went to a the “Falling for Greenville” festival.  Beautiful day, quite a few people, bands and lots of food which I wrote about before.  Here are a couple photos.   One of the photos is the “waiter race”.  They have to open a wine bottle, fill two glasses of wine and  put on a tray, go to the next table and set the table correctly and pour water, keep carrying the tray with wine and go over steps and deliver a menu, get the check, figure the tip correctly and carry the two glasses of wine back with out dropping, breaking or spilling anything.  Having spent so many years in food service I could really appreciate the skill all that took.What a hoot.

Yesterday was the Travelers Rest Fall Festival and celebration of 200 years of Travelers Rest.  What  a trip back to simplier times, small town fun and yummy food.  I think the pictures say it all.   Don’t miss the elephant.  I especially liked the bowling alley for the kids.

 

 

There is a new historical society group starting to meet once a month and I think I will check that out.  Might be a good way to meet new people and learn about the history.

Courage at 58

I know there is true courage – the kind you have when faced with illness, job loss, financial loss and thank goodness I am not needing that kind of courage.

My definition of courage today:

Courage when you are 58 is what you need when you want  to meet your women neighbors and you invite a goup of women you have never met to your Mary Kay skin care party next week! Stay tuned.

What works really well

Our favorite features:

Everything all on one floor.  36″ wide doors.

The weather, so far.

The orientation of the house to the rising and setting sun.  We get some sun in the screen porch in the morning and then everything is shaded the rest of the day.   We won’t need an umbrella for the table.  Even though this is shaded the backyard is sunny most of the time as is most of the rest of the lawn.  Given the warm summers this shaded area will be really important.

The screen porch. We are out there morning, noon and night.

The view of the trees and the privacy of the lot.

Big windows in all the rooms.

Nine foot ceilings.  They really make the house look open and spacious.  When we finish off the basement and have to put in the ceiling it will be really nice because we will still have 8 foot ceilings.

Big kitchen and family room.  Works really well for how we live.  We eat at the stools by the counter all the time if we are not eating outside.   So far we have had one meal in the formal dining room.

We haven’t used it yet but I think next spring when we get our rocking chairs for our little front porch we will enjoy sitting there.   There are many people walking so good opportunity to chit chat and meet the neighbors.

Big unfinished basement!

Third stall of garage.

Storage building.

View of the woods from the office.

Ceiling fans in living room, master bedroom and family room and soon office.

Surround sound in walls and all the things I mentioned earlier about the two TV’s.

Master bedroom and bathroom that are bigger then we expected.

4′ X 5′ shower.

A non wood deck.  No more power spraying and sealing every year.

Winding tree lined country roads with no traffic but not to many twists and turns.  I have been doing most of the driving when we go out because I like these roads.  Bob does the freeway driving.

SC News

This is a big college sports area with Furman and Clemson so close.  The big news Monday was that the Clemson football coach for 10 years resigned effective immediately.  Sounds like no big scandal but his team was losing and it was time to go.   Today the big news is that because of the revenue shortfall which is affecting all parts of the government here as well as MN and other states, these two colleges will see their state funds shrink 15%. 

BMW is a big employer here and they announced cutting of 733 temp. jobs.  These jobs also provided health benefits and are considered well paying at $12 and $13 an hour. 

Both McCain and Obama are speaking in SC today, Saturday.

The drought continues to worsen.  Now it has spread from NC, SC, Georgia back to Kentucky and Virginia and West Virginia.   Those last three states had problems last year.  I thought it was interesting that in Kentucky a year ago it had gotten so bad that they told people to conserve tap water and brought in tens of thousands of gallons of bottled water to distribute to people.   Fire also was  a significant problem in the mountains and in Virgina.

On a positive note there were several bits of good economic news with the economy strong enough to have new shopping centers, hospital complexes and other business development continue as well as endowments of millions of dollars to Furman and Clemson.  Greenville is working hard to move its economy from the textile manufacturing area to technology based business.  They see a shortage of trained people in the future and growing the enrollment in technical schools is very important.

On a personal note, Fay was most excited to read in the style section that the new spring hair styles for 2009 are buns high on the head and some even off to the side as well as sleek ponytails.   Once again she will have a hair style that is fashionable and will go well with her fairy T Shirts and jeans.

If we had it to do over again

Considering we planned almost everything in a week, we did really well.

Not so high speed internet access.  Cable probably not available here for at least a year even though there is cable two houses down.  No satelite available. That may be coming early next year. The wireless cards are much much better then dial up but still not what we were used to in MN.

Verdict is still out on the stainless steel appliances.  I would not want to have black or white in the kitchen so it is the right look but it sure is a pain to keep up, especially the refrigerator.  You can’t just wipe it off and dry it, windex doesn’t do it either so you HAVE to use stainless steel polish.  Reminds me of my first full time job at St. Josephs Hospital Kitchen in Mankato MN.  It was run by nuns and every night we had a thee step polish of all the stainless steel counters and doors in the kitchen and there were a lot of them.

I think we will need more electricity brought in to finish off the lower level even though we did add an extra panel.

Need another air run to the office.   Think this room will get pretty warm. Will put in a ceiling fan and that should help.

Lot is really steep.  If we wanted to live in this development with the privacy of the woods in the back there is nothing we could do about that.  They brought in 60 dump trucks of fill and it is still steep and house could not have been positioned differently.

Garage could be a little longer and wider but again, given the lot and placement of the house there is nothing we could do about that.  Third stall of garage and new storage shed solve most of that problem.

Living room side of the house where spare room and office are could have been a little wider.

Be nice if the deck was a little bigger but again, given the placement of windows and the house there is not much we could have done.

And last but not least, we had to leave all of you  in MN  so if we could move you down here we would not be missing you.

Review of our new appliances and living green

I read before we moved here that SC is supposed to have very clean water.  Unfortunately now I can’t find the article.  The water does taste good so no Culligan water filter here.

Water is soft, no water softner!

We have a ceptic system so still learning about that.  So far no problems.  I guess there are special paper products and soaps that are better for the system so will be looking for those.

We put in the energy efficient bulbs in every light that we could.  However, we do want to dim the lights in the TV room and you can’t easily dim those lights so we had to take them out and replace with the old bulbs. 

The grass seems to grow pretty slow, yes I know it is new sod, but we are not planning on mowing it this year.

We did get True Green lawn service again.  With the new sod and the red clay soil we thought we needed some help, plus the soil is very alkaline.   Problem here is the grass does grow all year so instead of 4 treatments a year it is 8.

Doesn’t get as cold as MN so don’t think our heating bill will be very high but probably will use more air conditioning.

Front loading washer and dryer – definitely uses a lot less water to wash and very quiet.  I have been trying not to use my Downy fabric softner, just the sheets, but the towels just don’t feel the same!  Both the washer and dryer have timers that show how long is left and that is nice.

Flat top stove – looks nice but much harder to keep clean.

Dishwasher – pretty quiet.

Refrigerator with ice maker and water dispenser and double doors with pull out freezer drawer - The freezer is huge and the pull out function is great.   We have not even turned on the full size freezer downstairs.   We like the icemaker and cold water.   Temperature control in the refrigerator has been tricky.  Froze and popped a bunch of soda so turned it up a little.  Seemed ok for a few days and then things started freezing again.  Bob read the manual and we found that if you open the door where the ice is and don’t close it completely then you have problems with the refrig. getting to cold.   Unfortunately we did not learn this until It froze all the fresh produce I got.  Bye bye lettuce, spinach, carrots, cabbage and a few more cans of soda!   One feature that is really nice is if you don’t close the refrig. or freezer door tight it beeps at you and that has happened several times.

46″ TV -  LOVE IT!  Haven’t had much chance to appreciate the surround sound speakers but that will come soon.    Dish TV just like Comcast – 200 channels and nothing to watch!  We did subscribe to NetFlix again. 

22″ TV in Kitchen – LOVE IT.  Clear pictures and it swivels around so easy to see from chairs or while cooking.  Dish tv is working well.   I listen to the Sirius jazz radio station all the time.  It’s good we have it because with my wireless Verizon card for internet access I have a 5 gig limit and so can’t listen to Pandora.com radio all the time like I used to.  It is really nice in the family room and kitchen to listen to the radio with the sound coming out the wall speakers and the TV and I can also walk into the living room/dining room and hear the music through the surround sound speakers.  Bob hasn’t had time yet to figure out how to connect our wireless speaker so we can listen to the music in the garage, basement or storage shed.   All the cable boxes, receiver, dvd player are in the closet in the office so not much in the living room.   Everything is controlled through two infra red receivers.    We even got the WII hooked up but haven’t had time to play with it.

Hot water – Just like in our MN house the water heater is in the farthest corner from the master bathroom so you have to run the water for a full minute before it gets hot.  For $600 we can put a booster heater on the water line.  Haven’t decided if it is worth that much to us.  Would save thousands of gallons of  water over the next 10 years.

Sprinkler System – Guy seemed to do a pretty good job of installing it and we get a lot of coverage for only two zones and a limited number of heads.  Some will have to be redone when we figure out what our landscaping is and already we need to change one because of the storage building.   Apparantly sprinkler systems are not very common here.

Security System – Got one but haven’t used it much.  We are always home.  Less per month then what we paid in MN and better system because it connects to most of our windows as well as the doors.

North Carolina wines?

Ok, this surprised me.  We have a vineyard  in our back yard in Travelers Rest.  It’s not clear to me if they have a winery also but we will find out.

And then I found out about all the wineries in NC!  Looks like many of them are about 3 hours away north and east of us.  Visitncwine.com to see a map.

North Carolinas finest wines!

With more than 70 wineries and 400 vineyards in 34 counties, the number of North Carolina wineries has more than tripled since 2001. North Carolina currently ranks 10th nationally in grape and wine production and was cited in 2007 as one of the top five state destinations for wine and culinary tourism activities in the U.S.

Growers in the Mountains and Piedmont regions have planted traditional European grape varieties and French-American Hybrids. Commonly planted varieties include Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Syrah, Chambourcin, Chardonnay, Viognier, Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, Seyval Blanc and Vidal Blanc. Plantings of native Muscadine grapes, often called Scuppernongs, are also on the rise.

Here are a few of them	WEB SITE
Daveste Vineyards	daveste.com
Rendezvous Ridge	rendezvousridge.com
Southern Charm Winery	southerncharmwinery.com
Weathervane Winery	weathervanewinery.com
Wood Mill Winery	woodmillwinery.com

New photos

In case you were wondering, I did NOT pose Tanya in all these picture.   She follows me around and every time I was ready to take a photo there she was.  Besides that, anyone who has ever had a cat knows it would not be possible to pose them to do something you want them to do.

There is a new photo album at Picasa.   Visit it.   Let me know if you have any problems.  I also put a slide show on my web site if that is easier for you.   Go to http://www.usucceed.com/TR_home.htm.  If you click on the little green icon on the lower left by the yellow icon for a person you can see the descriptions for the photos.   You also see them at Picasa.