Spring Break Trip - Day 4

We were both awake by 0645 and ate breakfast at the hotel. Mollie had a tough night (very bad cold and ear ache) but was determined to continue our adventure at the next planned stop: Congaree Swamp! After checking out, we got on US-378 (heading west) and stopped in the town of Sumter to get ear drops at Walmart (0845). It was a beautiful day and, inspired by descriptions of a visit I’d made with Mollie’s mother in the mid-1990s (and the snake she’d seen the day before), Mollie was determined to find some more wildlife in the unique, remote wetland forest at Congaree. We used the GPS to navigate on back roads (most efficient route?) and arrived at about 0915. We watched the park video and it piqued our interest in the amazing ecosystem even further. It was a bit brisk (light jackets required), there were no bugs and there was not a cloud in the sky - we headed out on the boardwalk for a 2.5 mile hike with great excitement! The lower boardwalk was flooded about mid-way but we were able to get deep enough into the swamp that we got amazing views of the majestic trees. Some of them were over 150 feet tall - "champion trees" and possibly hundreds of years old. The park apparently preserves one of the last such areas in the Southeast - there were once hundreds of thousands of acres of this type of habitat around the country but it was almost all cut in the Nineteenth Century. We didn't see a lot of wildlife at first but eventually got views of huge woodpeckers, a black rat snake, some caterpillars and - biggest treat of all - an alligator. Mollie checked out all kinds of things with our binoculars and we never stopped scanning the water/trees for surprises. We heard many more birds (loud owls) and got a lot of exercise on the high boardwalk. Most of the other trails were flooded. It began to get quite crowded so we went back to the Visitor Center for souvenirs (1230) and, soon after, the car. Mollie told me that this was one of her new favorite day excursion parks (Me: "Better than Catoctin?" Her: "Definitely!"). We enjoyed a light picnic in the sun before heading south for our next stop. While planning the trip, we'd hoped to stop in Charleston but it was getting late when we finished with Congaree. So we changed the plan in order to visit Saint Simons Island in coastal Georgia. We got on I-26 and then I-95, stopping for gas in Hardeeville (SC) at about 1515. Mollie kept reminding me that the Fort Frederica NM closed at 1700 and it brought back several memories of similar dashes for passport stamps. We call it "The Minidoka Maneuver", memorializing just one time I arrived at the Visitors Center at exactly closing time and we got a stamp anyway - "they said it couldn't be done" (or think Blues Brothers 106 miles to Chicago). Needless to say, every traffic jam, red light and creeping driver caused me to think I'd fail at my mission and be unable to make my rather obsessed daughter happy. We made it and then Mollie said "see - you shouldn't have worried." Story of my life... We were also supposed to vacate the park when they locked the gate but one nice person who worked there said that the gates opened outwards even if we got locked inside. With that "green light", we walked the grounds of the rather amazing ruins of one of the first settlements in Georgia. There were streets running along their old pathways, foundations and cellars of the residences - each place told the story of the former residents. The trees were probably the highlights - they were all draped with moss and looked so "Southern". The foundation of the city was in the last 1730s and it only lasted a few decades before it was abandoned. After we left the grounds of the park, we stopped a few hundred yards away at the site of the first Church of England built on Saint Simons Island - there was a monument and garden to the Wesley brothers (clergymen of hymnal fame). Wanted to spend some more time in the area but also needed to check out the logistics for a trip over to Cumberland Island (about 40 miles south) to figure out if we could visit the following day. We got back on I-95 and drove for a little while, stopping in Kingsland (Georgia) for and enjoyable dinner at Ritter’s Frozen Custard and Burgers at 1830. We then drove down to the waterfront and found the ferry landing. I left open the possibility that we could return in the morning and Mollie said she wanted to research the park a little bit more. We next drove back to I-95 and headed south into Florida. There were a lot of "new" highways and even more traffic near Jacksonville but I used my old routes and we managed to reach the Naval Air Station by around 2000. From memory, I found the Navy Lodge and we checked in there. The place brought back a lot of memories of my earlier life in the military and Mollie seemed to enjoy hearing a lot of the tales from that time, including when her mother and I were first married. Mollie said the ear drops were making her feel a lot better and she spent some of the evening reading, watching TV, doing homework and researching the National Parks in the area. The weather was forecasted to be much nicer for the next few days and Mollie had really started to feel better (cold mostly gone). We both went to bed at 2300.