Daffodils, a Waterfall, and a National Park

Gibbs Gardens, Amicalola Falls, and Congaree N.P.

Mar. 2022

Millions of daffodils at Gibbs Gardens, Georgia

Our route this spring has gradually worked its way north in a zigzag pattern between mountains and coastline, as we have tried to follow the gradually warming weather, hoping to extend the spring bloom season as much as possible.

I really wanted to revisit Gibbs Gardens in north Georgia in time to see the huge daffodil display, which we missed last year. So, after visiting Charleston, we headed northwest. Our first stop on the way was Congaree National Park in central South Carolina.

New green leaves were sprouting, but the tree canopy was still pretty bare.

Congaree is not a swamp, actually. It’s an old-growth forest in a floodplain. According to the NPS, Congaree is protecting a very tiny remnant of what used to be millions of acres of old-growth floodplain forest across the southeast U.S. that was lost due to trees being cut down, and floodplains being drained for farmland and cities.

Much of the Congaree floodplain is actually dry most of the time, but when we visited, most of the trails were closed due to flooding. There must have been a lot of rainfall recently. We were able to walk most of the boardwalk trail, but even a little bit of the boardwalk was below water in one area where it was not built up high. The boardwalk has numbers along its railings that correspond to an information guide. This guide helped us know what we were looking at.

We saw three snakes lying on branches right above the water. I had to crop this photo quite a bit as the snake was not anywhere close to us, and was actually hard to spot.

We were there only a couple of hours, as that was the only open trail. The next day, we hit the road again.

We spent several days having a great visit with Craig’s aunt and uncle, whom we hadn’t seen in years. We laughed and laughed at all the funny stories they told. It sure was good to see them.

We were camping on Lake Hartwell (on the Georgia/South Carolina line) while we visited them. We had a huge campsite with a big deck overlooking the water. It was fabulous!

Then we headed to our campground near Amicalola Falls State Park. We couldn’t camp in that state park, because the road to the park campground is suitable only for small RV’s, as it’s very steep, windy, and narrow. We drove the car to the state park, which was busy since it was the weekend. Behind the visitor center is a trail that links up to the southern end of the Appalachian Trail at Springer Mtn.

The falls are 729 feet tall. We drove up the windy road to a parking lot partway up, where we walked a short trail to a bridge over the middle of the falls. Then we walked a few flights down stairs to get another view of the falls. I decided to walk down to the bottom rather than climb back up. Craig hiked back up to get the car and meet me at the bottom of the falls!

This photo was taken from the pedestrian bridge going across the falls. The photo below was taken from farther down the stairs below the bridge.

We drove the car back up the windy road, this time going to the very top of the falls.

This is why we drove to the top, rather than walked up!

There was a nice lodge at the top of the falls, with a great view of the surrounding hills from the back terrace.

On another day, we went to Gibbs Gardens. It was the third week in March, which was peak bloom time for the mid-season daffodils. The hillsides were covered in wide stripes of white and yellow daffodils of many varieties.