More of Congaree National Park

    Hi everyone. Happy Friday. Today I am joining Nicole for her Friday Face Off and Gillena for her Friday Lunch Break.

   Thanks everyone for your wishes for success with the new batch of bees. And I love reading your bear comments too. 

     This past Sunday I shared some photos from my recent visit to Congaree National Park which is about a half an hour outside of Columbia, South Carolina or about 2 hours outside of Charleston. Here's the post if you're interested :   An Ode To Trees.   

    Today I'm back with the rest of the photos from the walk on the boardwalk that my husband and I took that day.  OK, these first couple of photos don't have any faces. It looks so peaceful and quiet, doesn't it?

   When we arrived at the park's visitor's center, we had a really hard time finding a space to park. One of the reasons it was so crowded that morning was that the park was celebrating. 2026 is the park's 50th anniversary. Since they are a National Park, run by the federal government, they were also celebrating the US's 250th anniversary. One thing they had going on was that at a few points along the boardwalk they had music students from the University of South Carolina playing music. 

   The music was great. Most of it was traditional American tunes.  The students were also very willing to answer questions and talk about the music. We even  later spoke with one woman who was a combined music and environmental science student. She was thrilled to be able to combine her 2 loves here at the park.

 These woodwind players had climbed down into a dry patch below the boardwalk.

I thought their music stands looked  lonely but also interesting in the woods.

 

    There was also a chorus singing in another spot just off the boardwalk, but I didn't get any photos of that. 😟

The further we walked, the sounds turned from human music to the songs and sounds of nature.
   

     You can really see the muddy forest floor in this next photo. This is the area where they were  constructing the new boardwalk.

    And there's more wet and muddy forest floor in this next view.

   We had a paper trail guide, and along the boardwalk there were marked spots.  One marked spot had an old still set up from Prohibition when bootleggers found this area to be a perfect hidden-away spot to produce their alcohol. FYI- Prohibition was mostly during the 1920's. You can tell in the photo that this still covering has been sitting in the forest for a long time.

   And here's South Carolina's state plant, the palmetto.

And of course these cypress trees with the cypress knees were quite interesting.

    And there was wildlife. I have never seen so many pileated woodpeckers in one day or in one area.  Can you see one in the next photo? They were hard to get a picture of because they hopped around the trees and flittered out of sight a lot.  I read they are the largest woodpecker in the US too. I didn't know that.

    There were also lots of grey squirrels too, including the one running along the boardwalk.

    The park is known for their Fox Squirrels, but other than this sign we only saw Gray Squirrels.

  But we did see quite a few reptiles, especially down at this pond.

   There were a whole lot of these snakes in the water. I think they are Brown Water Snakes, but I could never get a clear identification.

 And I'm not sure if this next creepy crawly is some kind of lizard or a salamander as it was below me (since I was up above it on the boardwalk). It was also near the snakes, and it's skin looks pretty smooth and not scaly. But of course, I wasn't close enough to see very well.  The blue on the tail makes me think it's a juvenile type of skink (Blue tailed skink-a type of lizard), as they have blue on their tails which disappears as they age. 

   And then we saw this turtle/ tortoise crawling around.

   I really don't know much about turtle/tortoise identification, and I couldn't find a picture online that helped me ID it.

  And ha ha how about this cute guy you could buy in the gift shop. I must say I thought about it because he looks like he could be fun to play with. 😉

   I'll leave you with that face. I hope everyone one has a wonderful rest of your Friday and start to the weekend ahead. 

    I'm adding that I'll also be linking a up to Mosaic Monday.

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.