Exploring the Timmerman Trail

Picture this:

Sunday afternoon in mid-February.
75 degrees.
Sunny.
No plans.
Nothing that absolutely has to be done at the house.

What do you do? Usually, we opt for a Sunday funday at River Rat Brewery, but since I still had 9 days to go in my 30 day challenge, River Rat was out. The South Carolina opening weekend baseball game was already well underway and not worth the effort to try and get there to get a ticket.

Patrick and I decided to head over to Cayce to explore the Timmerman Trail portion of the 3 Rivers Greenway. If you're like me, you had no idea how to even get to this place, let alone what the trails were like. Here's the scoop:

We parked at the SCANA entrance of Timmerman Trail off of the 12th Street Ext in Cayce. This was super easy to get to, there's plenty of parking, and it puts you right at the beginning of the trail.



You can go along the trail for about half a mile before you hit a split between "Bridge Trail" and "South Trail". We hung a left at the sign to cross over the massive bridge and continue along the Bridge Trail portion.



We stayed straight on this path for a total of about 2 miles... there was another split somewhere along the way that we didn't take and we crossed over what looked like a dirt path portion of Timmerman Trail. Anyway, 2 miles in, there was another split that had a map with it.



I checked the map and realized that we were at the point where the Bridge Trail & the South Trail meet back up. If we took a right and headed down South Trail, we'd end up making a big loop and heading back towards the car.



That's the way we ended up going and if I'm being honest, I liked the Bridge Trail a little bit better than the South Trail. There were more bridges to cross over {obviously} but it was also a little more scenic.





I kept my eyes open for snakes and alligators but we didn't come across any wildlife other than a few squirrels, a skink, and a butterfly while we were out there. Oh, and this guy:

 

At the very end, after making our big loop and walking up the trail back to our car, we had walked a total of 4 miles.

The path is a mix of paved/wooden walkways, doesn't have river flooding damage like the Cayce side of the 3 Rivers Greenway, and it wasn't super crowded. There were plenty of families with small children, kids on bikes & scooters, people walking their dogs, and quite a few runners... but I wouldn't call the trail crowded.

It's definitely somewhere that I'd like to take my bike and somewhere that I'd like to go running, but not by myself. It was just unpopulated and woodsy enough to feel like the start of a "female runner goes missing" story on the 11 o'clock news and I've got no interest in being the lead of that story.

As long as I can find someone to hang out with on Timmerman Trail, I'll be back!