Our day started in London, Kentucky. We were soon on our way further south as we were heading to Spartenburg, South Carolina.
We like to stop at the Welcome Center rest area since it has a nice little uphill trail allowing us to get out and walk a bit after being in the car for a while.
The trail has lots of interesting plants like Striped wintergreen.
Moss diversity is quite nice as are the lichens (which I will leave for another post).
A surprise find was several little patches of Cranefly orchids (Tipularia discolor), which like Puttyroot, spend the winter as single leaves. So, this is our second orchid find of the year.
Heading further south our lunch options were rather limited – as was mask use. Many times, as with the person who took our carry-out order, masks were below the nose and sometimes even the mouth.
We made a brief stop in North Carolina (where we are planning on visiting friends later in February) so Susan could pick up an annotated copy of a book by William Bartram.
We did end the day in Spartenburg, South Carolina and stopped at Hatcher Garden to look at plants before getting carry-out at Olive Garden where a quarter of the staff was properly masked, half improperly masked, and a quarter un-masked. The mask situation seems to be trending downwards as we drive through the conservative south. No wonder covid cases are rising in the area.
Michael's Place 