Visiting the #1 National Park in the U.S. (in South Carolina)

When Kevin wanted to visit some sites in the Southeast and invited us along, it was a great opportunity to see some thing we always talked about but never did because it's so close to home. To start our trip, we decided to go to Congaree National Park. It's relatively new (established in 2003) and it's not terribly popular but every park has something to offer so we were excited to see it.

Upon researching the park, it didn't seem all that promising. One of the big things to do is a 3-hour canoe trip, but they were booked up because we decided to go only a few weeks ago. They do have a lot of hiking but since it's a floodplain (which is a nice way of saying it's a swamp) parts of it are frequently flooded or very muddy. The descriptions of the park weren't terribly exciting either - per Wikipedia, "The park preserves the largest tract of old growth bottomland hardwood forest left in the United States. The lush trees growing in its floodplain forest are some of the tallest in the Eastern United States, forming one of the highest temperate deciduous forest canopies remaining in the world." That sounds ok but all of the qualifiers did give us pause and we know it's hard to compete with a lot of the parks in the system.

After a 3.5 hour drive and virtually no signs until we were about 2 minutes away, we arrive and there's this:

Thankfully it was cloudy and cool and they helped keep the mosquitoes mostly away.

The main trail was a boardwalk that has an elevated section and a low section. We saw recent pictures where much of the lower part was flooded which worried us but thankfully the water had receded in recent days so we were able to walk the entire section (well, at least the parts not closed by construction). We saw Bald Cypress trees and their knees, Loblolly pines, Water Tupelo and Dwarf Palmettos plus 8 feet of muck.

We didn't see much wildlife besides squirrels until the very end of our hike when we made it to the lake. There, we saw a couple colorful birds and two turtles that we're pretty sure were expecting us to feed them.

We joked about this park beforehand and I'm sure the jokes will continue, but it was pretty nice and quiet and we did see some things we've never seen before. Like always, the National Park System doesn't disappoint.

The day ended with dinner in Aiken, SC (which has a downtown area that's way nicer than we ever thought it would be) and an early bedtime before we head to Atlanta tomorrow.

As they say in the Congaree swamp, "Even the gators don't come here." Note: No one says this because no one knows this place exists.