For the current issue of G Magazine, I wrote about a summer road trip across the upstate of South Carolina. With photographer Peter Frank Edwards, I met fishermen and fiddlers, tasted local wine, and waded into mountainside swimming holes. PFE’s hound, Sparky, rode along in the station wagon. I love this kind of travel, and this magazine always does a beautiful job with design. The feature runs eight pages. Here’s an excerpt:

SUMMER ROAD: Following the Cherokee Foothills Scenic Highway

When the teenage boy walked up and eyed the slippery rock made smooth with algae and the current of mountain water going downhill… well, that’s when the show began. It was mid-morning on a sweet, early summer day at the shoals, and up until then, there’d been only quiet sunbathing and wading by the small crowd gathered there. Then, without a fuss, the kid in cut-off shorts took on the wet slope standing up, all the way down, surfer style – even spinning around backwards for part of the ride, slipping past the boulders and trees that line one side of Little Estatoee Creek, the sunbathers on the other. He didn’t fall. He didn’t even make it look like it hurt. (Other sliders who make the ride sitting down or on their stomachs confirm that a few scratches and bruises are usually the worst damage.)

The stunt was part of the June scenery at Long Shoals Wayside Park a few miles east of Keowee-Toxaway State Park – where everyone from miles around knows that just beyond the woods at the parking lot’s edge is a path to the naturally-formed waterslide. The sliding possibilities and sights there are just one of the wonders along this part of the upstate arc of Old Highway 11, the Cherokee Foothills Scenic Highway…

– Sandy Lang, August 2009