Conagree National Park

Good evening! As I said yesterday last Friday we went to Conagree National Park. It was a really super nice day for a walk. Warm, partially sunny, just perfect really. We did a 6.6 mile loop, which starts out on this huge elevated walkway then in the middle is a regular trail and then you're back onto the elevated trail at the end.
We saw that we were not the only ones walking on the elevated boardwalk... I think this is a raccoon.

The reason they have a super high elevated trail, is because this isn't really a swamp, it's a floodplain. You can see on these trees the line from the last flood. It floods sometimes up to 8 feet! The dark line is about 6 or 7 feet off the ground.


There is a huge variety of plant and animal (and bird!) life in this park.
The had some switchback which is related to sugar cane.



They also had swampy areas. What really amazed me was how black the water looked. It was almost pure black.


The trees there were huge. They say they have some that grow 17 stories high. They certainly were impressive. For example take a look at this pine tree. Looks normal, right?


Until you put my hand on it and realize each piece of bark is as big as my hand!!



Harland looks dwarfed by this tree...

And I'm pretty sure when this tree fell, even if no one was around it made a noise. Quite a loud noise in fact.


And even the poison ivy grows large... see that vine next to me? It's all hairy (as the park ranger said at the station, "If it's hairy, then it's scary").


The bootleggers had a hiding spot for their liquor in the middle of the woods...



Here are some more shots...


This tree caught my eye on the drive to the park. It's a little down the way but I had to stop and take a picture. The Spanish moss on a tree that had leaves was really quite striking.