Tuesday, March 29th – Poinsett State Park to Congaree National Park to Devil’s Fork State Park – Day 49
Our campsite at Poinsett State Park was open. You could see everyone’s trailer but no one was really around. There were these beautiful small trees with white blossoms that were all around the park. We ate oatmeal with honey. Charlotte free poured honey onto her oatmeal and it was a sweet mess. After packing up, we ran into three mountain bikers that had just come back from riding the trails. They had biked 12 miles and had completed about half of the park’s trails. They were coming in for a bite to eat and then heading back out. My dream would be to wait until the kids are a bit older and do the same trip only to make the focus mountain biking. I have previously seen trails at Jonathan Dickinson in Jupiter, Florida that were professionally groomed with banked curves and jumps. It would be so much fun biking trails through the forest.
We went to the visitor’s centre to get a stamp on our Georgia junior ranger passport. The visitor centre was located on a small lake. There were chairs to sit-on to look out and a play structure. We need four stamps to get to Georgia junior ranger level 3. We are on stamp three. The ranger recommended a small hike nearby so we went to check it out. We had to drag the kids away from the play structure and promised a quick walk. There was an extremely photogenic stone spillway that led water to cascade down some rocks in the ruins of an old mill. We took multiple photos. The water then led into a shady forest where multiple streams merged together in a idyllic setting. It was stunning and then we brought the kids back to the play structure as promised.
Back on the road we headed for Congaree National Park. Basically, it’s a swamp. Technically it’s a floodplain forest. It has some of the tallest trees in the Eastern United States featuring giant hardwoods and pines. We arrived and received our junior ranger booklets and then had a quick lunch of sandwiches, cheese and crackers and leftovers. The kids worked on their handbooks.
The hike we set out on was a 2-mile-long boardwalk. On the suggestion of a volunteer, we cut out the last third of the boardwalk in favour of a trail through the floodplain. The kids had a scavenger hunt in their junior ranger booklet so we were on the lookout for woodpeckers, turtles, crawfish chimneys, cypress trees, lizards, owls and more. Mary took the lead. She has a very focused stride on hikes. Gen and Aisling were next and I was with Charlotte and the slowpoke, John. John and Charlotte were so diligent at looking around to find everything on their scavenger hunt. The boardwalk was an easy walk and very scenic. The day was beautiful and we stopped to listen to the sounds of the forest which was incredibly relaxing. Each wetland we stopped to look for turtles but couldn’t find anything.
When we finally returned to the gift shop, the kids got their badges. We also purchased a national park passport for each kid. They can take the passport to each national park/monument/forest and get a stamp as a record.
We were then back on the road and headed to Devil’s Fork in the far north-west of South Carolina. The drive was scenic, the gas station washroom was not.
We saw the mountains as we approached but it was dark when we arrived so the mountains were darkish mounds. We set-up shop and our neighbours came over to warn us about bears in the area so be careful with our food.
After we got everyone into bed, Gen and I snuck down to a little beach near our site. We enjoyed the starry night and the sounds of the water lapping the shore. It was a nice bit of private time for the two of us; we chatted about what to do and where to go next.
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