We finally made it! Congaree National Park in South Carolina!

Our goal is to eventually visit every National Park in the United States together. So far, we have visited Acadia, Shenandoah, and of course, Cuyahoga Valley. Congaree was the next logical stop as it is pretty close.

Congaree was around 45 minutes away from the State Park that we stayed at. It was a dreary, cold day (60 degrees at the highest). We made the drive to the park, and were surprised by the number of people that were there. We found out as we approached the visitors center that they were doing both Earth Day and National Park week activities.

We collected a map and self-guided tour book (for the boardwalk portion of the park). We, of course, had to stop for a selfie!

The boardwalk at Congaree is a very easy, 2.4 mile hike. It has high and low parts, to accommodate the terrain that makes up Congaree. Congaree National Park is home to the largest intact expanse of old growth bottom hardwood forest remaining in the southeastern United States. Water from the Congaree River comes through and creates the floodplain which supports the growth of these trees.

If you know anything about Scott and I, we love the nerdy side of things. It is a very common thing to find us watching documentaries and listening to podcasts. The boardwalk at Congaree had a self-guided tour book. This was a really cool, and fun way to learn about the National Park! Every so often, we would walk up to a number, and read the corresponding information about it. One of the coolest facts we learned is that Congaree National Park was originally established in 1976 as the Congaree River National Monument. It wasn’t until 2003 that it was named a National Park. We thought it was so cool to be in such a newly designated National Park. Since then, there have been 4 more parks designated! Yay for conservation!

Anyway, back to the story. We learned a lot of new and interesting facts, saw a lot of diversity in the wildlife and plants, and generally enjoyed our time walking through the boardwalk. We had hoped to walk off the boardwalk on some of the trails, but made it about 50 feet and turned back due to the amount of mud and water we had already encountered (if you remember our last posts, there was a massive storm that had come through the area. We were actually lucky the boardwalk wasn’t flooded over).

Overall, we give this National Park 8/10. We really enjoyed the self-guided tour (much to Abbie’s dismay ;)), it was a fairly nice day for a wetland area of South Carolina, and we just generally enjoyed our time!

*I have since been told by a former coworker who visited Congaree last summer, that warm months are not a time you want to visit the park. She said she and her husband practically sprinted through the boardwalk to get away from all of the mosquitoes! So, I’m certain that we visited in the perfect season!

Here are just some of the many pictures we took along the way!

On our next post: We will take a look at the state park we stayed at in SC!