With the weather looking pretty questionable for the next few days, we decided to skip church service and visit Congaree NP today. Congaree NP is only partially open so far. The “front country”, where the 2.5 mile boardwalk and the visitor center are located is still closed. But the “back country” hiking and canoeing trails are open. We hiked the Kingsnake Trail from the Cedar Creek Canoe put in to Bridge J. According to our All Trails app we hiked 5.6 miles, gained 13 feet of elevation and burned 1,291 calories. Congaree NP is on the Congaree River and was made a NP in 2003. The river inundates the parklands several times a year. The river has wandered through the low country of the park for centuries and created hundreds of oxbow lakes. The area is heavily forested and has some of the last old growth hardwood forest left in the eastern US. The Kingsnake trail wanders through this low country on an old logging road. At about the three-mile point, the bridge over Cedar Creek had the two ends washed out. People were still climbing up on the elevated portion of the bridge to get across the river. We decided it was a good turn around point. It was more humid on this trail than the trail through the Hoh Rain Forest in Olympic NP we hiked last year. Fortunately it was not really hot and the bugs were not very active. The Oxbow lakes had lots of crawfish in them and we saw some raccoon tracks. We could hear a woodpecker and an owl, but the forest was so thick we could not see far. There were a lot of bald cypress trees along with various other hardwoods. The trees in this floodplain forest are some of the tallest on the east coast. Surprisingly, there were actually quite a few people on the trail, but everyone kept their distance. With the visitor center closed, we could not go in and see the park movie or buy David’s NP Hat. But we had emailed the park ranger earlier and they agreed to send us a stamp for our NP Passport.
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Entrance Sign
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| Oxbow Lake |
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| Bridge over an Oxbow Lake |
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| Bald Cypress low lands |
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| Bridge J |
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