Chester SP, SC

What to say about our stay in Chester, SC?  The campground was nice, pretty small as they have only 25 sites and two cabins.  The park is large, with day use area, 9-hole and 18-hole(?) disc golf courses, kayak and paddleboat rentals and 3 or 4 shelters.

e area around Chester is farmland, with few large businesses (wood and what looked like a factory).  The town itself has a nice small historic center, but it is very quiet.  It’s about 45 mins from Charlotte, NC.  We ate at one of the restaurants, Hillside Restaurant and Bar and had some good pizza.

We visited Historic Brattonsville, Revolutionary War and Antebellum era plantation.  They have number of historic buildings, including a general store/post office, Gin house (cotton gin, as I got excited at first :), blacksmith’s workshop, the main house and slave quarters.  Seeing those was sobering, but I appreciated how it was incorporated into the interpretation of the site.  There’s ongoing archeological research on the property. 

We walked to the site of one of the revolutionary war bottles, called Huck’s Defeat. After the Patriots’ victory of regular British troops, it helped in spreading the revolutionary cause in the south. Part of the movie Patriot was filmed on the property.

The best part were the farm animals, heritage breed pigs and sheep.  Check out the video below - the sheep were herded into a pasture, but no, that’s not what they wanted and most promptly escaped.

The male pig (hog?) was huge! The staff described the pigs as bred half of “meat” producing and half of “lard producing” breeds.  Hard to look at them and think of what’s is their purpose.

Played many rounds of disc golf, Tom and Anthony got so into it, but I am very bad, need lots of practice.  Definitely something that we would like to continue playing.

We cut our visit short by one day, there is really very little to do there and we were eager to get to Blue Ridge Mountains and the Smokies.   

On the road again!