Congaree National Park-An Ode to Trees

    Hi everyone. Happy Sunday and weekend to you. 

    And to all you Mothers (of human  children or other children most probably  of the 4 legged variety),

  Happy Mother's Day. 🎕 ❤ 

     Today I am linking up to Nicole's Sunday in the Art Room (Sitar) and Gillena's Sunday Smiles.

    I'm taking you to Congaree National Park which is outside of Columbia, South Carolina. We visited the park when my husband I  took off a few weekends ago and flew to Charleston (South Carolina).  On Saturday (of that weekend) we took the 2 hour drive inland to visit this park since we hadn't been there before and didn't know when we might be back in this area again. 

   Congaree  National Park  is basically  a large track of bottom land forest with a couple of rivers running through it. It's beautiful forested land too, quite different from what grows in New Hampshire. 

    My art today is me trying to get some interesting tree and forest views. We walked the Boardwalk trail, which because 1/3 of it was removed for reconstruction, meant we walked about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) to the end and then turned around and walked back. It was a lovely walk though, and I saw lots of wildlife. (Although for the sake of brevity, I'll have another post later in the week with the wildlife and some other park views.)

    This was not only a beautiful walk, but really relaxing since it was flat. And although my photos make it look like no one was there, when we first arrived it was quite crowded. In fact, we had a hard time finding a spot to park.

     And here's some of my "Arty" photos of trees, at least the ones I really like. I'll start with this loblolly pine. Wow those are tall trees. And what a fun name too. 

A cool shadow

and then more height

 Below is the bark of the loblolly pine.

Fungi enjoying the remains of a dead tree, and then below, a very large plant gall.

And I didn't know we had wild American holly either. 

    Being bottom land the forest floor was quite muddy in places. We ran into a couple from New Hampshire (that we didn't know) but we were chatting, and they told us that when  their son had visited the park  the bottom land was flooded. I'm not certain when that was.  From what I read the forest mud here was quite thick, which is why there is a boardwalk.

    Of course, being wet, this place could be filled with mosquitoes.

    But as you can see on the Park's Mosquito Meter, it was not a problem the day we went. In fact, there weren't many insects at all. This park does not allow bug spray because it was one of the few places in the southeastern US where there are synchronized firefly events-meaning all the fireflies are flashing at a similar time. We missed that event by a few weeks, but since it is very popular, there is a lottery for tickets to attend. They can't have the park trampled by people and all the habitat for the fireflies ruined.

   As I mentioned, I'll have another Park post later this week. Until then, have a great rest of your weekend and start to the new week.