Palmetto Trail Lynch's Woods Passage 4K

Our tenth hike of the year ... March 30, 2024
We headed to Newberry, SC to Lynch's Woods Park. This is a park that was established in 1934 by the CCC. It encompasses 276 acres and offers hiking, biking, and equestrian trails. There's two parking areas .. we parked at the first parking area that's on the right (it's a large gravel parking area that also has a sign/information board). As a note ... there's no overnight camping allowed in the park.
So, we head off and hit the trail. We walk the gravel road to the next parking area - this is where the trailheads are located - about a ¼ mile into the hike. This parking area is one way - go left to enter and to the right is the exit. There's also a small trathroom and pretty large picnic area - both seemed well maintained. As far as I could tell ... the trails aren't directional - so you can go whichever way you'd like (honestly I couldn't tell that there'd be a major benefit going CW vs CW). I just defaulted to going the CW direction ... which starts on the entrance side of the parking area. For the first ½ mile of the trail from here - it's just a woodsy walk where you kinda criss-cross the road. At about 5/8 of a mile ... we found a fun place to let Sally play in the water! At 1 mile ... there's a nice little picnic area. From here we continued around the loop - until about our 1.5 mile mark where Sally came to an abrupt stop which caused me to come back to reality and realize - SNAKE!!! Thankfully, much like us - it was just trying to enjoy the sunshine. And it was just a black rat snake ... very mellow guy who didn't want to move from the trail - so we had to go up the hill to go around. There was a stump on the left side of the trail - so I'm assuming he probably stays in/near it - so if you decide to take a rest, you might want to double check that you don't have some extra company hiding. After taking a deep breath, we continued along the trail - much of the rest of the hike is just going through the forest. Not really a lot to see .. plus around the 1.75 mile mark you start going back and forth under what I assume are power lines. The trail passed by an open field/meadow that had a hunting stand in it - so probably during hunting season it'd probably be ideal to wear bright colors! Around the 4-4.5 mile mark there were some muddier spots-but nothing unmanageable. And we came out right by the picnic shelter in the lower parking area-where we went left to exit the parking area then followed the road back to the other parking area where we'd started.
Things to note ... we only did the Lynch's Woods passage of the Palmetto Trail on this hike - which ended up being 5 miles total. There's a few other trails there too - but I'm guessing they're similar in terrain to what the passage trail had. It seemed like it'd be a good trail for mountain biking - if you were comfortable with your skill level. And definitely a great park to take dogs especially to let them play in the water, Just follow the little Palmetto Trail signs ... I noticed at least one major difference between how the trail was "blazed" and what is shown on the Avenza map - it involved going up a hill instead of staying on the Walter Cousins Road around the 3.9 mile mark. I just followed what the sign said which was to go up the hill (probably the steepest ascent of the day - but nothing technical). I'd consider this an easy trail - but not very interesting. But nice - if you just need a quiet walk in the woods, because we saw no one after about a mile on the trail.