August 9, 2025 -- Camden to Jefferson To Peachland To Albemarle To Charlottesville

Charlottesville

August 10, 2025

After a crescent shape drive from Charlottesville to Columbia, I decided to take a different way back home. I decided to check out Jefferson, South Carolina; Albemarle, North Carolina and then back to Cville. Truly a wanderabout -- for a while. It was tertiary and quaternary (I had to look up that one!) roads that I could only have navigated with the help of Google Maps. There were so many turns!

Jefferson was a quiet town with too many empty store fronts. A factory sat just outside of town -- the kind that probably employed 100-200 people. It sat vacant.

From Wikipedia:

Jefferson is a town in western Chesterfield County, South Carolina, United States at the junction of SC routes 265 and 151. Jefferson is located in the Piedmont region of South Carolina just in the edge meeting the Sandhills region. Jefferson is located 16 miles northwest of McBee, 8 miles south of Pageland, 50 miles southeast of Charlotte, North Carolina, and 70 miles north-northeast of the state capitol Columbia. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 753.

Jefferson was incorporated in 1904. Jefferson was founded in the 1760 by the Miller Family, and was named Millersville. You can find many Millers buried at the Miller family cemetery on main street.

On April 14, 2020, a local turkey farm reported a case of Influenza A virus subtype H7N3 which resulted in the euthaniztion of 32,000 turkeys.

After spending an hour in Jefferson, I headed to White Plains, which turned out to be an historic house, not a town. Bummer.

More backroads took me into North Carolina -- very rural North Carolina. Lots of Baptist churches both here and throughout my drive. I wondered if the churches were less about God and more about being a place where communities could gather to socialize. Folks here didn't have "next door" neighbors -- maybe they congregated at church on Sundays (and Wednesday nights?) to catch up with folks. I suspect God had something to do with getting together as well. If I lived here, I might go to church to pray for "improvements."

Albemarle is a fairly good size town -- 16,000 + citizens. Typical southern town of that size.

Up until getting to Albemarle, I felt as though I were back on my wanderabout. My driving was more about the journey than a destination. I stopped and took photos and walked around. It felt good. But then someone else took over. My mindset changed to how soon could I get back to Charlottesville. Four hours? Let's see if I can make it in 3.5 hours. It was jarring -- and exhausting! I made it back in 3.75 hours. I got here and thought, well, I have nothing to do -- why did I rush? Hopefully I learned (again and again) something from that experience.

My slideshow from the drive. The soundtrack is from a group named White Plains. Sorry the music ends before the slideshow. Bummer.