Cherokee Foothills Scenic Byway (SC Highway 11) Drive Guide

SC Highway 11 runs roughly 120 miles along the base of the Blue Ridge escarpment, and it is the single best drive in the state — a two-lane ribbon that skirts the mountains without climbing them, so you get the wall of blue peaks on your left the whole way and rolling peach country on your right. It threads past Table Rock and Caesars Head, over Lake Keowee, and through orchard land that grows more peaches than Georgia will ever admit. Two stops earn a pull-off on their own: Campbell’s Covered Bridge near Landrum, built in 1909 and the last covered bridge left standing in South Carolina, sitting in a small free county park; and any of the summer peach stands where the fruit was on the tree that morning. Run it in late fall for color or May for the falls and the first peaches.