Ellie here!!! : ) Congaree. Was. Awesome. A couple days after we arrived at Sesquicentennial State Park, we decided to go to Congaree National Park, which was not too far away. The car trip was real boring, but it was worth it. When we got there, there was a building, the ‘Ranger Station’, that had some cool facts and an interesting video. They also had a Junior Ranger program, where you can earn badges by following instructions and filling out papers, and we found out they had the same program at each park, so we can keep on earning badges each park we go to! ; )
After filling out some papers for the Junior Ranger thing, we set off on a boardwalk trail, which was very fun; we saw a lot of cool animals and really old trees. Two of the coolest things we saw, in my opinion, at least, were these old tree-knobby-things called knees, which were sticking out of the ground/water that scientists guess were made to anchor the trees during floods, and also a part where the bridge was flooded from the last storm. The people at the Ranger Station said it floods a lot.
When we finished that trail we went on another called the Bluff Trail. This one did not have a bridge. It got kinda boring, after a while. There were really tiny frogs, that we tried to catch– Finn actually caught one.
It was really pretty on the Bluff trail, too…
At the end we had to do this ‘Junior Ranger Pledge’ thing, before she gave us the badges. The lady we were supposed to repeat after wasn’t holding her hand up right, and she was reading the pledge off a piece of paper, because she hadn’t memorized it yet. After that, we went to the car and went back to Sesquicentennial Park.
🙂