A Congaree Promenade

Today, we went on a family adventure and we didn't have to go farther than just down the road. Okay, well maybe down the interstate, but whatever.

I hadn't spent much time down in Congaree National Park since my days in the Girl Scouts when my parents shipped me off to get me out of their hair to camp for a week in the summer with my cousins, Angie and Robin. It was probably that trip that deterred any kind of desire to return as at the week's end, my body was covered from head to toe with chiggers, Robin had been stung by a bee through our tent as we slept, and somebody peed on me at night when I was too scared to sleep in a bunk by myself for fear of the awful attack bees. It didn't help that our camp counselors, Cookie, Cupcake, Muffin, and the rest of their gang of pastries were mean as the snakes we were trying to avoid.

The thing is, Congaree is absolutely beautiful. I mean, really, I've been missing out on some serious experiences in nature. I wish that I had been using this place all along. There are a few ways to journey through the park. A lot of folks visit in canoes and kayaks and paddle through the heart of the forest. Others trek through on foot, and the NPS has designated different trails of varying lengths for visitors to use. Since we had the kids, we chose the often-traveled boardwalk trail for our first odyssey into the swamp. And, oh my goodness, it was an experience I won't soon forget.

At the visitor center right before the trail is a 'Mosquito Meter' with a range from 1 (All Clear) to 6 (War Zone). Since I had left the bug spray at home, I wasn't so excited about the 5 (Ruthless) rating on the meter, but I thought, screw it, how bad could it be? Ha! I now know what happens when a mosquito mates with a bird. These things were so big my shoulder would drop when they landed on it. And I could hear them sucking my blood. I could hear them thud on the ground when I knocked them off. And they were everywhere. The air was cloudy with the flying blood bandits. Should I have been surprised? We were in a swamp, after all, which clearly has mosquito birds. Summit couldn't stand it, so the child wore a rain coat with the hood up for 2 1/4 of the 2 1/2 miles around the swamp. Poor kid, those suckers love him as much as they do me.

The trick around the mosquitoes was to just keep moving. Of course, we had to stop to take some pictures and check out the trees. These things were amazing. The bald cypress trees and the water tupelos are crazy and enchanting and surreal. The loblolly pines are massively tall. Some of those bad boys are 700-800 years old. Bald cypress have these crazy knees, which are root systems that grow up out of the ground so that they can get air when the plain floods. When the ground isn't flooded, the knees stick up out of the earth, looking like something Peter Jackson would have elves living in. I just imagined glowing fairies playing stringed instruments and dancing and flying around at night. Too cool.

There were other sights to take in. Lizards were everywhere. Caterpillars and butterflies, too. We saw beautiful dragonflies with dark blue wings and bright green bodies. Hollowed out trees where bats live since there are no caves in the swamp. Gigantic mushrooms. Black swampy water and muck. There was an old moonshine still in the woods that, before we read on the map what the creepy, rusted-out, one-room size box was doing there, we told Summit that's where the bad kids had to go in the old days. We saw a huge red-headed woodpecker going to town on a downed tree just beside us on the trail. So much of the awesomeness of nature in South Carolina was right there.

It was an incredibly fun exploration, a great learning experience for the kids and the parents. Good exercise and good times with the family. I don't think life gets better than that.