A Short Visit to Aiken, South Carolina - Horse Country

We didn't much feel like another plane change in Atlanta, and conveniently Aiken, SC is about halfway between Savannah and Atlanta, so we decided to take 2 days to travel from Savannah to Atlanta, and just board a non-stop plane home there.


It takes about 3 hours to drive to Aiken from Savannah if, like us, you take the back roads. There's not much along the way really.

At one point we thought we saw a Swamp Ape (the local equivalent of a Sasquatch or Bigfoot), but I think we may have been mistaken. We tried for a picture anyway. Other people have become famous with a lot less, so why not try.

Conveniently, some long-time friends retired to Aiken about 7 years ago, so we even had some people to visit and show us around the town a bit. These days the primary attractions to Aiken are the Savannah River Site, a nuclear research facility, and retirement, primarily by horse-people. There are several training facilities for racehorses, the oldest continually operating polo field in the U.S., and several hunt clubs. The climate is noticeably drier in Aiken than in the Low Country of Savannah and Charleston. It's hard to tell, but it was all uphill driving in from Savannah. I can see it being a very comfortable place to live.

All I know about horses is that there is a rounded end and a pointy end - and that it's generally best to stay towards the pointy end. Our friends, on the other hand, know a lot more about them.

If you have horses you have to have a stable or horse barn . . . . 

. . . . and that means a barn cat.

The town of Aiken has a very nice downtown area, with lots of good restaurants and shops, and some very wide streets with wide landscaped medians. The streets in the center of town were originally designed to be wide enough that a wagon pulled by a team of 4 horses could turn without disturbing a wagon on the other side of the street. Many of the streets are covered over with branches, giving them a tunnel effect.

We ended the last day of our trip with an evening stroll around downtown Aiken, and dinner at Davor's Cafe, which was excellent. Aiken is certainly a town we would return to for another visit.

Peaches were in season in that part of the country, and we couldn't end our trip without one last excellent dessert, in this case a fresh peach cobbler right out of the oven.

Click here to see more images from our visit to Aiken, South Carolina.


This is the last post from our June 2-9, 2012 trip to Charleston, Beaufort, Savannah and Aiken. If you would rather read them in the proper order, scroll down to the archives, find Part 1, and then click on Newer Post as you finish each one.