Day 8, Tuesday, May 30, 2023
Today was a travel day, after 5 nights parked at the Charlotte Motor Speedway campground we were finally moving on to the second part of our vacation. The next few days will be spent sightseeing our way down the South Carolina and Georgia coast as we visit Myrtle Beach, Charleston, and Savannah.
We loaded up and left Charlotte by 8 am. We were on our way to Myrtle Beach but had a stop to make on the way, at Congaree National Park. We love visiting national parks. Our goal is to eventually visit all 63 national parks in the United States. We are well on our way with our stop today being number 14 but we still have a long way to go.
Congaree National Park is in the middle of South Carolina. We actually drove an hour out of our way to see it but we knew this may be our one and only chance to visit this one. We arrived at the park mid-morning and started with the visitor center. The visitor center is always the best place to start when visiting a park. The rangers are able to give you a quick lay of the land and you can pick up maps, merchandise, and, our favorite thing, you can get your National Park Passport Book stamp. This park is basically flooded timber. According to the National Park Service, it is “the largest intact expanse of old growth bottomland hardwood forest remaining in the southeastern United States”. We opted to walk along the 2.6 miles Boardwalk Loop trail. It gave us a good taste of what the park is all about. Noah spent the whole two miles trying to spot snakes or an alligator. No luck on the alligator but he did spot 3 snakes which made his day. We also got to take our dog Ona walking on this trail. She was having the time of her life exploring the trail and sniffing (or barking at) every stranger that walked by.
We finished up our visit to Congaree after a couple of hours and got on the road again. We were eager to get to our next destination, Myrtle Beach. We arrived late in the afternoon, basically just in time to set up camp, cook some dinner, then head out to the boardwalk to check out some sights. The boardwalk was pretty neat, very touristy, but fun to see all the same. We got some ice cream and meandered our way through the shops along the beach. It was a relaxing evening, a perfect way to top off a busy day.
Tomorrow we plan on staying in our campground at Myrtle Beach State Park. We have the beach & Atlantic Ocean just a few hundred yards from us, some piers to check out, and several walking trails.