Around Town
Michael on the Map By Michael Detrick
Take 8: Long Creek, South Carolina In this series I will be traveling to the towns of northeastern Georgia and western North and South Carolina, sharing my adventures and discoveries as I meet the locals who make up the area. Hop in my Jeep and let’s hit the road!
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etween last month’s and this month’s travels, the rhododendron had said their seasonal hello, briefly flecking the forests with a floral summer snow of brilliant white blossoms. The lush wildwood canopy had never been greener, and summer rains came and went, leaving everything vivid and dewy. And the bees. Sometime also between then and now I nursed a wicked bee sting to the face, which made me look like a post-plastic surgery Mickey Rourke if he sat and drank in the sun all day and then got into a fistfight. Really nice. An ER visit, steroids shot, and a few pills later, and my face finally deflated. I was stung as well last summer and enjoyed a good amount of time – quite literally – as “the bee’s knees”. (Careful out there, folks! This is nature’s world, and we just live in it.) OK, back on the map! It was a gorgeous day when I set out for Long Creek, and I was excited to take a trip to the river, out of state. Queue up some Kinks “Sunny Afternoon” and off we go! Straddling Georgia and South Carolina – thus forming the state line – the Chattooga River finds its headwaters just southwest of Cashiers, North Carolina, and travels 57 miles south to its convergence with the Tallulah River, forming the Tugaloo. Designated a Wild and Scenic River in 1974, the Chattooga was the first river east of the Mississippi to be granted such distinction and is the only one today that is commercially rafted. The ”Crown Jewel of the Southeast”, the Chattooga is a free-flowing river that quickly responds to rainfall and drought conditions, as
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nature intended. A drop-pool style river, vigorous rapids are followed by calmer pools, which can be enjoyed for swimming. But it is the rapids that make this river famous. It is here that you will find the best whitewater rafting in the southeast. Headed east on US Highway 76 from Clayton, I crossed over the Chattooga; behind me the Chattahoochee and before me the Sumter National Forest. Not far into the Palmetto State but far away from any palmettos, you come upon the Bull Sluice access point. A benchmark Class IV+ rapid, Bull Sluice is the largest and final cataract of Section III of the Chattooga. Famously featured in 1972’s Deliverance, the trail to Bull Sluice is a short 0.2mile oft-traveled path. I made the quick trek and joined other spectators perched on the rocks and wading in the pool towards the top of the drop. After witnessing some successful rafting and kayaking runs and checking out the sandy beach just downstream (a fantastic place to take a picnic), I got back on the road to Long Creek.
