Congaree National Park is on every list for the least-visited national parks. It’s been on my to-do list for years. We finally made it and it is our 156 national park/monument/etc! It isn’t super easy to get to and you don’t want to visit during the hot, humid, and buggy southern summer (which is much longer than a northern summer). They even have a scary sign rating the mosquito activity but luckily we visited at the right time. We can see why people might not visit as often but it is a very nice park.
We walked the 2.4 mile boardwalk loop. The trees average over 130 feet in height so that Congaree is one of the tallest deciduous forests in the world. Bigger trees include former state champion loblolly pine. It’s former since a part of the top fell during a storm. We saw cypress, pines, tupelos, and other species here.
Lots of bald cypress trees and their knees.
The boardwalk made it easy to see a variety of habitats including the
ever present sloughs.
We finished our visit with a hike of the 2.2 mile Bates Ferry Trail to the Congaree River. The hike is very easy along an early road. This road had to be a lot of work to make since the dirt was built up along the length of the road so you could travel it even with some flooding. Just cutting down trees for the road must have been a large job.
The ferry was started back in the 1700s. A few pilings are left of what used to be a bridge that replaced the ferry in the early 1900s.
Nice park!
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