Congaree National Park

Have you visited South Carolina before? If you have, you were probably headed to one of the many destination points long the coast, and you may not have realized you weren't all that far from a national park.

Congaree National Park is located just south of Columbia. I wonder how many people in Columbia don't know of its existence.

It is beautiful, while it has a slightly odd setup. It is a small park. Consider the numbers I presented in the last post. The smallest of those parks, Rocky Mountain, has an area of roughly 260,000 acres. Decrease that tenfold to 26,000 acres and you have the size of Congaree.

With that stated, size is not proportional to beauty (insert Michael Scott joke here). Congaree preserves the largest area of old-growth, bottomland, hardwood forest in the United States. That may sound like a lot of specifications, like he's the only pitcher to strikeout three batters in one inning on his mother's 50th birthday, who has a black lab and three goldfish as pets. The truth is it's not that obscure. This forest used to stretch from Northern Virginia to East Texas, or roughly 24 million acres. Remember my rant about not being forward-thinking in the east? Case closed.

Congaree also contains the highest temperate canopies (deciduous inferred) in the world (although some South American forests come close or exceed this forest in certain places).

Congaree is not only a free-entrance park with free camping and the legal collecting of firewood, but it contains virtually no roads within the park.

Day 65
After an early start in GSMNP, I made good time getting to Congaree. I visited the visitor center to obtain my free camping permit and headed out for a hike. Behind the visitor center is a 2.5-mile boardwalk trail through the forest. Walking through the forest, I really didn't feel as though I was in the eastern United States. Although extremely small, it really felt like it was some exotic land not named South Carolina. 

Day 66
The next morning I got ready early for a big hike - sadly, my last of the trip.

I began with a section of the boardwalk trail. From this photo you can see the water line on the trees. Here's a tricky-but-cool statistic: 80% of the park floods, on average, 10 times every year. Yet, I don't believe it is technically a rain forest. But the humidity is no less apparent than in Olympic. One woman called the water lines tide lines; I wanted to pat her on the head and say, "Good try, but I don't think the ocean makes it all the way to Central South Carolina."

The park was not very crowded, which was very nice for being my last day in a park. However, because of this, for many of the trails I hiked, I was the first line of defense against last night's cobwebs. Being tangled up in cobwebs is not a great feeling, especially when the spiders look like this. What was amazing is I don't think I was bitten once.

I sat and had lunch on a bridge with this view.

I was also excited to see some new wildlife. Other than a deer, I saw a wild pig, but he was running away so fast, I wasn't able to get a photo of him. Later, I thought I saw a good photo opportunity along a creek, so I stepped off trail to look. It didn't end up being a good a photo, but when I stepped back on the trail, I saw two snakes which appeared to be fighting? Like the bears, I took about a million photos, and a few of them turned out okay.

At one point, they both stopped and had their heads pointed my way. I figured I was a bit too close and went back to pack up the camera. When I turned, I knew one was in the grass next to the trail, but I really could not see it. I began wondering how many times I missed cool wildlife that was blended into the background. And maybe not just animals which blend into the background, but even ones I just missed. For example, at Grand Canyon NP, I followed a giant elk through the woods. He eventually came out onto the road and disappeared into the woods on the other side of the road. The cars which passed immediately following would have had no idea what they missed. Or, if you remember the grizzly bear I saw in Yellowstone, I was only about one minute from missing him entirely.

Congaree National Park Album

This concluded my national park tour.

On Day 67, I visited a high school friend in Jacksonville, Florida. It was great catching up and playing guitar with someone other than my invisible friend. The day following I spent briefly in Atlanta catching up with more friends.

Day 69 was my trip back to Cincinnati and the bittersweet ending to an unbeatable summer.

Like I've mentioned before, the remaining posts will consist of reflections and lists throughout the month of October.