buzzard roost heritage preserve

Loved the walk in, beautiful views of Walhalla and the surrounding towns. The wild flowers were showing out. Great day walk to get back with myself.

We discovered this very, very empty nature preserve from a book of Upstate SC Family Hikes. Last June, it was wonderful. We drove up, saw the fairly new signage, and hiked up the hill, ate wild blueberries, had a picnic in a nice clearing near the summit, and came back down. All in all, a wonderful afternoon.Fast forward 13 months and we went back, hoping to recreate that (and have a few blueberries). Well, maybe only 8 people have visited since we were last here (the parking pullout holds only one car, and we still have not seen another car on that road). The trail was quite overgrown, in some places requiring you to push back brush and even downed saplings just to find some secure footing. The kids, in shorts, were getting brambles and thorns all over their legs, and there was no clearing, anywhere to have a snack.In short, we got through as quickly as possible and returned to the car. It was not a pleasant experience and one child even said, "Worst day of my life."Note about getting there, Rich Mountain Road is a dirt and gravel road, but is very solid and has no rutting. The forest road you turn off after 3 miles of driving is similar. I've not encountered national forest roads in such great shape before. Wish I could say the same for the trail at the nature preserve.