Page Updated: March 18, 2024
Congaree National Park
2024 MAR
Boardwalk Loop - Congaree National Park
Our first national park of 2024 and we couldn’t have asked for better! Small, quiet, and gorgeous, it’s a beautiful treasure worth the grassroots fight to save it. We spent a day in Congaree National Park gawking at trees and learning about the forest’s secrets and it’s extensive history.
Congaree isn’t the smallest national park, but it cracks the top 6 smallest national parks - kind of saddening when you learn there were once millions of acres of similar forests in the U.S.
Since it’s so small, you can easily experience Congaree in a day unless you want to string some long difficult hikes together.
Wanting to see as much of the park as we could, we started our day out on a phenomenal kayaking tour with Carolina Outdoor Adventures.
After our 4-hour paddle and were ready for lunch!
Other than campsites, the only place with picnic tables in the park is right outside the Harry Hampton Visitor Center. After believing we’d have another day of rain, it was refreshing to see some sunshine!
As the usually are, the visitor center provided history on the park and the old-growth forest. There’s also a 20 minute movie visitors can watch if they’re interested in knowing more about the park.
We topped the day off with a meandering hike on Congaree’s popular Boardwalk Loop. The loop is an easy 2.4 miles. We goofed off in the little bit of flood water spilling over walk. Made for a fun walk!
scenes from Congaree National Park
Boardwalk Loop
