Cypress Knees, please

Today we called the Columbia, SC, Flying J truck stop where we filled up yesterday and they had our fuel fill cap.  Amazing!  And wonderful.  The first, because as the Flying J manager said, “No one ever turns these in.” and the second, because with a few phone calls we found that replacement fuel caps can be hard to find. 

Even an 18 wheeler repair shop had none.  There are just too many types for too many styles of fill pipes. Ours is back on with a jury-rigged tie down so it won’t get away again. It was well worth the hour drive up and back to get it.

Then southeast a bit to one of the newer national parks in the country.  Congaree is a forest, a river, a swamp and a rarity.  It is one of the last old growth cypress woods north of the Okeefenokee in Southern Georgia.

The visitor center was closed today (sequestration budget cuts, we were told) but the picnic area was open (lunch!) and the bathrooms (yea!) and there was a trail map available outside the office.  All set.

Board walks take hikers over the swampy sections of the woods available for drive-in tourists like us. And even, well marked paths are opened on dry ground.  We didn’t see any alligators but were told there are some. Most park visitors are boaters, canoers and kayakers who float down from the west or put in along the river in the park.

The ground in this 12 month a year wetland is made up of eight foot deep clay and detritus (dead leaves, etc) stirred by flooding and rain into a tight and fertile thick goop. Hence the boardwalks.

   

Some of the highlights of our walk included a giant loblolly pine, the tallest tree in this wet land forest.

And of course the cypress, with its distinctive field of ‘knees’ popping up from its root system below ground.

The cane break or ‘switch cane’ begins to grow where the ground rises drier just a few inches higher in elevation than the swamp.  Less clay, more green.

There has been some storming this year which has damaged some of the boardwalk, but we enjoyed our walk very much!  For the pleasant day, and the pleasant company.

We met a new mommy and daddy and 6 month old baby Braden and they took our pic with our camera and we with theirs BUT we neglected to write down their names and they had to get Braden into the bathroom upon our return and we missed getting a pic of them.

But I can say this: they met in school in Colorado (Aurora, a suburb or Denver). They live in a suburb of Chicago now. He is an optometrist so we talked a lot about our nephew Phil the eye doc, my blephoritus, and Mona’s and my floaties.

He had not heard the answer to the floatie problem which Phil had shared with us. It is, after you are sure they are not pieces of a detached retina, “ Name them and claim them and call them your best friends”. At our age they can stay around for a while.

 

At our age?  Time is running out!  So we’re heading for Edisto Island TOMORROW.  Ocean beach, here we come!

-Ken