One of the coolest things about ending up in Columbia, SC is how close it is to so many of our friends who for a variety of random reasons live in the Carolinas. Three of my five college roommates live North or South Carolina, my best friend from high school lives in Wilmington, NC , Jonathan’s best friend growing up lives in Charlotte, NC, and my best lifelong friend lives in Spartanburg, SC, about 1 1/2 hours from us. It’s crazy.

This past weekend I went to visit my friend Leigh in Spartanburg, otherwise known as Sparkletown. Leigh works at her alma mater, Wofford College, which is probably the nicest part of Spartanburg. To be fair, Columbia isn’t all that much to look at either, so it’s not like I had a lot to compare it to, but Spartanburg is the quintessential small town in the South.

It was an exquisitely beautiful fall day, something we appreciate more than ever after it rained for 40 days and 40 nights, and we chose to take advantage of the great outdoors with a stroll through Glendale Mills, an abandoned mill site that now houses projects for  the Wofford environmental sciences  program. It was a beautiful day in a beautiful place and I really enjoyed doing something a little out of the ordinary.

In the afternoon we went to RJ Rockers Brewery, a cool microbrewery where I had beer that tasted like s’mores. Delicious.

The next day I headed back to Columbia just in time for Friendsgiving, a Thanksgiving dinner for the people in Jonathan’s program (and me! And a couple other significant others). We had turkey and stuffing and all of the best side dishes plus sweet breads and pies. It was a lot of fun. Plus yummy. It reminded me of the last two Thanksgiving dinners we had while in Korea when we crowded close to 20 people into our friend MJ’s 300 sq ft apartment and feasted on amazingly close approximations of our favorite holiday foods. Even though we’ll get to have Thanksgiving with family this year, I’m glad we had a Friendsgiving too. It’s starting to feel like a tradition.

If you have an adventure to share, add your link to the link-up by clicking the button below. You can also click this button to read other bloggers’ adventures. You can participate in all of the adventures or you can just do a few. If you missed last week’s adventure which includes a photo tour of our new place, you can find it here. And if you are new to my Fifty-Two Weeks of Adventure project you can find out more about it here.