Great Day. Beautiful Partner. Wonderful Ride. Amazing What You Can Find If You Just Look.

I ran a little harder than usual yesterday so I could try and get my load delivered to Graniteville. If I could pull it off it would allow me to get home to spend a little of father's day with Diane and make it to church with her last night. I did it, and actually had a few minutes to spare. That also was beneficial in finally giving me a lazy day with absolutely nothing on the "to do" list. I asked Diane if she was up for a motorcycle ride as she's never been more than about 25 miles at a time. The passenger seat on a Harley Sportster is not the most comfortable ride over a long distance. She wanted to get away for awhile and so did I.

Fill up time. 

We left with no destination in mind and no particular direction to go. We went to Kent's Corner in Graniteville and topped off the bike. It took every bit of $3.48.

Diane taking photos

Vaucluse Mills Pond

Diane wanted to go toward Vaucluse. Her mom and dad had lived there when they were first married, they are both buried there and, she still has relatives living in the area. So off we went. We traveled back down Bettis Academy Rd. and turned onto Old Vaucluse Rd. We have been here several times as Diane goes there frequently to take care of her mother and father's grave site and make sure the flowers are fresh. The ride is beautiful with high pines on each side but the road is in a terrible state of disrepair. The community sits in a deep valley and as you drop down the hill into the town it gives you a false sense of what is to come. As you cross the one-lane bridge into town the old Vaucluse Mills Pond is on your left. On the right is one of the many Graniteville Mills buildings which have been long vacated and are now dilapidated. The community echos the look of the mills. Some homes are vacant and boarded or have just been left and are falling apart. Almost all of them are old mill houses that were rented from the Mills by the workers when they were first built and then later they were sold. People working at the mills and living in the homes were given first option to buy them. The rents were low on the homes when they were owned by the mill but so was the pay. It was extremely hard work. I have family and friends who worked in the mills, including my wife who worked at the Hickman Mill in Graniteville for a short time right out of high school. The mills closing took a toll on the people living here, not only financially, but psychologically as well.

From there we followed SC 191 toward Graniteville. This is an amazing place to ride a motorcycle. It's only about 5 miles but the road twists and turns and there is a stream running alongside. We wanted to stop to take pictures but the traffic was backing up and I had to speed up since there are no pull offs.

As you pull into Graniteville the first thing you notice, once again, are the closed mills. They are everywhere. The mills here employed thousands of people in their heyday from all over the Central Savannah River Area. As the jobs were outsourced, the mills slowly closed. 

The mill closings were not the only problems this community has had to overcome. When I went to work for the Aiken County Sheriff's Office in early 1987 as a narcotics investigator it was the number one narcotics area in the county and probably within fifty miles. It was the epitome of the crack epidemic in the 80's. The people of this community were actually being held hostage in their own homes. It appeared to be an unsolvable problem. It took a concerted effort of the Graniteville community, and all law enforcement agencies in the county. We did it. We retook this community with the help of the citizens who were tired of being pushed around by a bunch of loser punks and began to push back. It took a lot of courage to face off against them and ID them to us but they did it and won.

Avondale Mills came in during the 90's and bought out what was left of Graniteville Mills allowing some of the people to remain employed. Then fate came crashing down again on January 6th, 2005. 

On that date a Norfolk Southern Railway train encountered an open switch causing it to run onto a siding containing a parked train. 16 cars derailed including the locomotive. One car was breached that contained chlorine gas. Nine people died, over five hundred were sent to hospitals, and more than fifty-four hundred citizens had to be evacuated. They had to overcome the heartbreak of losing friends, neighbors, and loved ones. Added to the tragedy Avondale Mills used this as an excuse to close the final mills and move out of town.

Train Derailment Memorial

Once again the people of this community picked themselves up, cleaned themselves off and pushed right back. The community is mostly made up of God fearing, honest, hard working people. These people want to work. They don't, and never have, wanted handouts. New industry began to locate here several years ago and continues to come in. Over the last several months the factories here are beginning to expand along with new factories and warehouses being built. The colleges in the area took on the challenge of retraining the workers and the county worked out incentives to lure new industry. I was so glad to see the way these people have pulled together and overcome so many obstacles that were thrown in their paths.

It was nice stopping there, walking around, looking at the town remembering how people can work together to overcome anything.

Horse Creek Valley Veterans Park

Next we rode through Horse Creek Valley seeing the progress being made there, especially around the Langley Pond area.

Then we stopped at the Horse Creek Valley Veterans Memorial Park. This is a beautiful park that was built from donations and anyone close should go and visit. It is on Hwy 421 in Burnettown.

We then continued into Augusta and had lunch at Bill's Family Restaurant on Peach Orchard Road. It was wonderful as usual. If anyone wants to have a good lunch for a reasonable price this is the place to stop. When I was a teenager over 40 years ago I would stop here for breakfast on Saturday mornings. I was 16 years old and thought I was cool going into a restaurant and sitting at the counter like the older guys. It still has the same ambiance as it did back then and the food is still great. Lunch including meat, 3 vegetables, bread and your drink for $7.50 is not bad at all.

After lunch we rode through my childhood neighborhood on the south side of Augusta. Next it was off to the Old South Augusta Lock and Dam. We parked and walked over the locks and out onto the catwalk. Diane said she had never been on them. I thought as many times as we had been there we had walked out there. We then left for the ride back home.

I loved the day. Diane and I had a wonderful day together and saw and relived some wonderful times from our past. We also learned that you don't have to spend a fortune going out of town on gas, food, motels and shows. Our total cost for the day was $18.48. There is so much to see right in your own back yard if you'll just take the time to look.