Greenville, South Carolina located in northwest South Carolina is one of our favorite spots for a day trip from Charlotte. That is of course if you can stomach the current construction mess on I85. Not to be confused with Greenville, North Carolina or Greensboro, North Carolina. We find ourselves having to include the state when speaking of it when in North Carolina.
Anyway, as far as a downtown goes, Greenville has it all – or at least all that we look for – breweries, walk/bike trail, plenty of restaurants and parks as well as a zoo.
Here is how we recently mapped out our day:
Parked at Cleveland Park and went in to the zoo. It cost around $28 for all four of us. Fortunately we carried cash as while walking in a large breaker went out and their power did as well. And so did their credit card machine.
After the zoo, kids played on the Cleveland Park playground. After an hour there (yep it’s pretty small) we took to the Swamp Rabbit trail into the downtown area. Kids took their push scooters and we walked. There were plenty of distractions along the way including an old fighter plane and toy ride to climb on. We took a small detour as well to test out the exercise equipment on the other side of the river. About a mile and a half from Cleveland Park we reached Reedy Creek Falls and ultimately the back porch of Mellow Mushroom (great spot for storing scooters or bikes). Topping it off we went around the corner to the Marble Slab Creamery. Where we discovered you can get unlimited toppings included in the price. UNLIMITED TOPPINGS? Yeah our kids went nuts.
From there we strolled down over to Linky Stone Park: The Children’s Garden and found some of our kids’ favorite characters from Peter Rabbit (their all-time favorite show).
After that we headed back to Falls Park on the Reedy and let the kids hop the rocks and play with the snakes in the water. Just kidding, no snakes. From there back to the Swamp Rabbit Trail to Cleveland Park to finish off the day. The total time spent in town was about 6 hours, before heading back 1.5 hours to Charlotte.
If there are suggestions of stops we might have missed please comment below and we’ll be sure to check out on our next Greenville trip.