As Easy As Falling Off a Log

My wife and I spent the last week of October, 2020, making a trip to South Carolina to visit our son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter. We had a thoroughly enjoyable time with them.

Congaree National Park

Four of us took a day trip to Congaree National Park just southeast of Columbia. Congaree is basically a swamp that some people wanted to keep in that condition, rather than have it drained and developed. (Nothing wrong with that.)

We spent some time walking along most of the boardwalk trail.

The scenery was basically the same all the way along the path. Occasionally there were fallen trees. Some of them were hollowed out - naturally, I assume.

Besides the boardwalk itself, there was one non-natural feature we found - the remains of a still. A signpost on the boardwalk explained that that’s what it was. I wouldn’t have known from personal experience.

Little Beaver State Park

After a few days of playing board games and playing with our granddaughter, we headed for home but stopped along the way at Little Beaver State Park about an hour southeast of Charleston, West Virginia.

Unlike many state parks, there is no entrance fee for those in West Virginia. We had decided to hike an “easy” path designated “Railroad Grade”. I don’t think there was ever an actual railway near the trail. It’s just that most of its 1.95 miles was fairly flat.

It had been a little on the windy side in the parking lot when we got there, but once “inside” the trail, it was completely calm. And it really did feel like there was an entryway to get to the trail.

The flora along the path, which traced one bank of Laurel Run Creek on the way out and the other side on the way back, was interesting and varied.

There was bright green moss in many places on trees - living and dead - and along the ground.

Mossy schnauzer

Fungi of many different colors adorned(?) the trees and ground as well. Sorry, I don’t know their names. (I didn’t ask.)

We saw many different species of plants. Some of them liked to grow on each other.

There wasn’t much fauna to be seen. We could hear crows, blue jays, and chickadees. And then there were several of these holes in the ground that seemed to have been created by some critter, but I’m not sure which.

All that said, we were pleasantly surprised to see a few deer cross our path. This is the one (of three, probably) who stopped to look at us.

At the far end of the trail, there was a wooden footbridge that we used to cross the creek so we could continue the trail on the return trip on the opposite bank. Sorry, forgot to take a picture of it.

About three quarters of the way back, we came to a tributary of Laurel Run Creek that we hadn’t noticed on the map. Now, I assume that there was supposed to be another footbridge to facilitate the crossing of said tributary, but all we could find were some stepping stones that didn’t truly look like they were supposed to be used for stepping on. Sorry again, but I forgot to take pictures of them.

We looked around the area and eventually found this fallen log and fallen bridge.

I took the picture from the opposite bank after scooting across like this.

We’re not totally sure about that bridge. If it had been on the tributary, then it somehow got around a bend and upstream from its original position. If it was always in its current location, then the return trip had to be made (as we, in fact, did make it) along the same bank at the outbound hike. But there were yellow diamond signs, used to blaze our trail, on tree trunks along the far bank past the tributary. We couldn’t see how you’d ever get to that section of the trail.

So...we had an unexpected adventure and lived to tell about it - mostly dry. (Neither of us fell in, but the trunk was a little damp.)

Go Home Again

Two days later, we had planned to take one more hike in West Lafayette, Indiana, but the temperature was in the upper 30s, and the wind was whipping along at a brisk 20 mph. We decided to skip the walk and headed home instead.

We got back in plenty of time for a disappointing Packer game.