Julie and I love national parks. We each have been to 22, but only one together. This year, one of her resolutions was to go to Congaree National Park in South Carolina, so I asked if I could go too!
Friday
We took the 7:20 a.m. flight from Detroit to Charlotte, which was quick and
easy. Since I'd picked up Julie at 3:30 a.m., I was tired and slept on the
flight. I asked Julie if she did too and she shook her head and said, "I
don’t want to brag, but it is my concentration that keeps the plane in the
air."
We then had a car rental experience that is exactly what I always WANT in a car
rental, but rarely experience. We walked to the rental garage, Julie tapped the
Hertz app, and it told us what number spot was ours. We walked up to it and it
was a Ford Bronco, which is even what Julie drives in real life. We drove out of the
parking garage and were on our way. Car rental companies take note! We didn't
have to wait in line at a desk or produce insurance papers or ride a shuttle.
It was incredible.
We drove straight to the University of South Carolina. We walked around the
pretty Capitol building, the Horseshoe on campus, and admired all the students
getting graduation photos taken. (This is also when we found out it was
graduation weekend!)
We parked at Savage Craft and ate lunch outside in the sunshine. We walked to
Hideout Coffee, got our coffees to go, and walked toward the Riverfront park.
We went to cross the street at an intersection, and the cars coming from our
right stopped. The driver waved us to go ahead of them. As we crossed, a driver
in a black truck, seeing the cars had stopped, screamed forward to make the
turn. He apparently didn't see us, because he accelerated right toward Julie
and me. There wasn’t enough time for us to react. He slammed on his brakes just
inches before hitting us.
He was close enough for me to see him, and he was just as
shocked as we were. The drivers to the right of us honked, and one of them had
a siren whoop as a honk.
Julie and I, shaken, stopped on the other side of the street. A woman in a car
paused as she drove by. "Y'all okay?" she asked.
We were. We both sloshed but did not spill our coffees. I want to emphasize
this – we were almost in a terrible accident. I have never been this close to
getting hit by a car, and I’m a runner. This would have put quite a damper on
the trip.
We were incredibly relieved, discussed our near-miss, and
headed to the river.
"If ever two girls needed a bench!" Julie said.
The bridge on the river was beautiful. We (very carefully) returned to the car
and visited some great art. Julie had made a list of things she wanted to see,
so we were checking them off. We saw Tunnelvision and Neverbust Chain by Blue
Sky. (That’s the name of the artist. No, it is not his given name.)
We drove to Sesquicentennial State Park for a hike around the water. Beautiful
trees and water and peaceful place. Really, really nice.
We ate outdoors at Three Notch’d and again enjoyed all the
graduates celebrating with their families.
Then we headed to Congaree National Park for the fireflies.
The week before Julie and I left, we both saw that there was
a lottery for getting into the park starting on May 13. We were there only May
8-10 and we were both really happy with our good fortune. We didn’t need a
lottery to get to the park – in fact, the park is free! We figured that we
could see the fireflies just days before the lottery started. The site told us
that the fireflies will blink synchronously.
When we pulled into the parking lot, we saw that there was
black tarp around the trees for a huge area to protect from car lights. We
walked in the pitch black into the park, kind of just feeling our way and
hoping we wouldn’t run into anything, because we weren’t allowed to use lights.
We saw lots and lots of fireflies, similar to what Julie
sees in her backyard and what I see over the creek in the summer. They were not
blinking synchronously, though. They were definitely blinking asynchronously. We
asked at the park and did some more online research and it turns out there is
one of 24 firefly species in the park that blinks at the same time. But they
were pretty and magical anyway! Just a bunch of insects that light up – amazing.
Saturday
We left our Vrbo house and went to the Soda City Farmers Market. (Cola came from Columbia, then the nickname Soda City.) They have this every Saturday, and it was giant and really good. Bakers, coffee, artists, a great mix. I got a permanent bracelet from two nice girls. They asked what we were doing, and we told them we came to see the national park. One girl said, “Here? In Columbia? I’ve lived here my entire 18 years and I’ve never heard that we have a national park, or that it has fireflies.” The other girl had heard of it, but had never been. Funny! We bought a loaf of cinnamon raisin bread to eat for lunch on our hike.
We drove to Congaree, and we went on four hikes:
Boardwalk - This was especially good, because they had a little
brochure with numbers on it, and you could stop at those numbers and it would
tell you what you were seeing. Great information and so cool. It identified
trees, told us different historical facts, and even pointed out an old illegal
still left in the woods.
Westlake – The tree knees were my absolute favorite. The tree roots made this
park different than any other I’ve seen. We saw a snake and little lizards and
a heron.
Longleaf – This was just a quick walk to the campground with totally different
topography.
Forks Swamp – We drove 17 miles to another part of the park, and we were the
only people on this hike. No cars, no people. I walked toward the water and came
close to stepping on a huge snake which was right in the middle of the path. We
didn’t have any service, so we couldn’t look it up to see if it was venomous,
so we gave it a wide berth. We then watched it climb a tree. Later we found out
it was a rat snake. We walked more carefully the rest of the hike.
All in all, we hiked about 8 miles, and it was great. Different
sights, really great smell like leaves in the fall, so many birds, really
interesting.
We chose to eat at War Mouth which had a great outdoor area
to sit, but it wasn’t that good, so we went to Handel’s Ice Cream afterward
which was.
We walked around downtown Columbia some more, and then we met
up at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral for a tour: Lanterns and Lunacy of the Lost,
a tour of the shocking history of Columbia. We were the only two on a tour with
a nice guy who used to work at the museum, and you could tell he loved history.
We walked around to a few sites and he said a lot of really interesting things.
I particularly liked the cemetery at the church, since it was incredibly old.
He also told about the legend three-eyed man, which I’d never heard before but
seems to be a South Carolina staple.
Sunday
We hit up a drive through coffee on the way to Congaree
National Park and met up with the kayaking company: Carolina Outdoor
Adventures. We took the Cedar Creek kayaking trip. I can’t say enough good
things about this company and tour. The owner Billy was there, our guides Julie and Paul
loved it all so much, and it was really great.
Practically every stick over the creek they’d point out a snake. So. Many. Snakes. I wouldn’t have seen even one of them if they hadn’t pointed them out. We must have seen 20 snakes. They even pointed out one in a tree and Julie and I kayaked directly under it just for kicks. It was not venomous, of course.
We actually only saw one venomous snake, and it was a water moccasin
eating a skink! It was so cool to see something like that in real nature. The
guides were delighted too – even they took pictures. We saw so many turtles,
birds, a giant fisher spider, and of course the snakes.
Julie the guide said, “Now we only need to see a barred owl.”
A few minutes later, we saw two!
Our guide Paul said, “You guys have had a magical day. That’s
the most species I’ve seen in one trip.” I said, “Oh, you say that to everyone.”
He said, “No, really! I saw four different species of snapping turtles alone!”
If I had been by myself, I would have seen so much less, and
probably not one snake. It was a wonderful 3-hour tour.
We drove back to the airport in Charlotte and boarded the
plane. We went to the very back row of the plane and were happily surprised
that there was an empty seat between us!
“Will Carla Wardin please ring the flight attendant bell?” I
heard over the intercom.
I quickly rang it, wondering what was wrong.
The flight attendant came over.
“I’m Carla,” I said.
“Oh, we just wanted to make sure you were on the plane,” he
said.
In all my time on planes, that has never happened to me. Thanks for
making sure I’m making my flight, American Airlines!
The entire trip was full of southern charm – the people, the parks, the animals. All so welcoming and interesting and beautiful, and all with a great travel partner who is the reason I went in the first place!
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