Roadtrip Story Includes Familiar Faces, Places

A writer recently took a road trip through the South and the resulting article includes some local stops and a few chats with some Pickens County natives. 

Elizabeth Boleman-Herring's "Upstate South Carolina (Culinary and Sentimental) Road Trip" was recently published on the Huffington Post. 

The author looks at how the South has changed recently and speaks with Zack Mauldin, editor of the Pickens County Courier about the textile industry's decline in the region. 

"Fortunately, the tide has turned in a big way in Pickens County," Mauldin says. "In just the last year or so, several high-tech manufacturing firms have decided to move to the county, while a number of existing county businesses have expanded operations."

The piece also includes an interview with Alliance Pickens director Ray Farley, who tells her of the success of the school district's emphasis on STEM - Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. 

"County students have won recognition at the local, state and national levels in STEM competitions and, in May, County businesses donated more than $10,000 to the school district to continue and advance the STEM program," Farley says.

It wouldn't be a road trip without some good eats, and the article includes stops at Mama Penn's in Anderson, Mellow Mushroom of Clemson and Cafe Connections in Pickens.