Extended Weekend Getaways By Kathleen Walls
Travel Writer / AmericanRoads.net
Besides the natural beauty, it offers museums, outdoor fun, and a robust culinary scene. Art abounds in its Ram Cat Alley, which is filled with murals set among restaurants, breweries, shops, and 12 unique painted cats. Visitors are challenged to find the cat art “sCATtered” around the city. It’s the perfect place to see the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains without having to drive switchback roads.
County Parks
Two county parks, South Cove County Park or High Falls Park, are set on Lake Keowee with 18,500 acres of water and a 300-mile shoreline. The lake offers some perfect views and plenty of water activities. From some places you can see Duke energy’s facility that offers a fantastic free museum, World of Energy. The 1831 Alexander-Cannon-Hill House is being renovated and will serve as the office at High Falls Park. Both parks offer camping. Whitewater rafting and kayaking are popular there.
Waterfalls
Oconee County is filled with fantastic waterfalls. Some are easy hikes, others more difficult. Yellow Branch is about a 30-minute easy hike. Laurel Fork Falls is about a 16 mile round-trip hike and is often viewed by boat. One spectacular fall just south of Seneca is Issaqueena Falls in nearby Walhalla at Stumphouse Mountain Park. It’s an easy couple of minutes’ walk to the falls overview from the parking area. There are tables for a picnic lunch here.
There are several legends of how the falls got its name. The most popular is about a young Cherokee woman fell in love with a white settler named Allan Frances. She learned her tribe was going to attack the white settlement. To warn her lover, Issaqueena set out on horseback and successfully warned the settlers. Naturally, her tribe was furious and vowed vengeance. She could not return, but remained in the white settlement and married Allan. Eventually they moved to Stumphouse Mountain.
When her tribe discovered where she was, they set out to capture her, but she saw them coming and ran and hid on a ledge near the top of the falls. The Cherokee believed she had leaped to her death and left. She came out and lived the rest of her life there with her husband and child.
Stumphouse Tunnel
Stumphouse Tunnel is in the same park and offers scenery of a different kind. It’s not a beautiful hike, but a step into history. The tunnel was a pre-Civil War railway work that was never completed. Jennifer Moss, Director of the Oconee History Museum, gave us a guided tour. She told us the tunnel was begun in 1856. It was to be dug with picks and hand tools by a crew of Irish workers. It would have provided a shorter route for the Blue Ridge Railroad between Charleston and the Ohio River valley area. Because of money mismanagement and then the beginning of the Civil War, the tunnel was never completed. It was put to good use. Clemson University at one time used it to cure blue cheese because of the constant 50-degree temperature.
You can hike about a quarter mile into the tunnel. It is somewhat like walking into a cave, but there are no stalactites or stalagmites, just rough, curved walls. Water occasionally drips on your head, and there is standing water on both sides of the walking area. I suggest good walking shoes, a flashlight and possibly a walking stick. Jennifer told us there are bats. I looked, but wasn’t lucky enough to find one.
Many of the Irish workers lost their lives while working in the tunnel, so there are lots of ghost legends about it. People have heard strange noises, people whispering when no one else is there and the sound of tools.
Stumphouse Mountain Park
The entire park is 440-acres and accommodated mountain biking and hiking. The Stumphouse Passage, a dual-use 1.5-mile hiking trail and 9.34 miles of mountain bike trails, is accessible from the park. Stumphouse Passage that stretches over 500 miles across SC from the upstate to the coast near Charleston.is one of three sections of the Palmetto Trail in Oconee County.
Chattooga Belle Farm
Another place with a spectacular view is Chattooga Belle Farm. Chattooga Belle Farm is a 138-acre working farm and event destination with a store and a distillery. It’s in nearby Long Creek, SC and its vineyards, orchards and berry patches behind the event center/store have a photo-worthy backdrop of the majestic Blue Ridge Mountains.
Ram Cat Alley Murals
There is another kind of scenery worth a visit besides the natural beauty. Seneca’s Ram Cat Alley murals, and painted metal cats in downtown Seneca pay tribute to the town’s beginnings. Back in the early 1900s, what is now the historic Ram Cat Alley was the home of Fred Hopkins Meat Market and other butcher shops and fishmongers. Local cats would smell the meat and fish being brought in and congregated. One local commented there were so many cats there “you couldn’t ram another cat in.” The early cats are commemorated in a series of murals at Norton Thompson Park on Main St. in front of the train depot. Each mural had a painting of a cat that helps tell Seneca’s story and a poem talking about that cat.
There are also 12 metal cats, each painted by different artists around the historical district.
Besides cats, Ram Cat Alley is filled with world class dining, antique shops, boutiques, and galleries. I ate at Ram Cat Cellars and loved the Pepperoni Flatbread and the desserts, especially the cheesecakes and the dark rich chocolate fondue with cake, marshmallows, strawberries, and apples to dip, are fantastic.
For an adult beverage, Keowee Brewery has local beer, wine and more. I recommend the Pink Peach Slushy.
