Thursday, November 11, 2010

A long Hike in the Woods

Yesterday, we almost over did it.  Congaree NP is a swamp and thus everything to see is down below on the forest floor.  So like good tourist, we picked up the info and headed out on the trails.   We decided that we had best stick close to well marked trails, so we chose a boardwalk.  (It can't be marked any better!)

It was a level hike and 2.5 miles in length. Not too bad for us out of shape flat-landers.   We took our time and had no problems.  At noon, it was back to the rig for lunch, a short nap and back to the visitor center for a ranger led hike on history.

To our surprise, the ranger led hike was going to cover the same 2.5 miles.   We asked if his presentation today would duplicate what he'd cover Friday night on their big weekend Swamp Fest doings?   Yes, almost the same.  It ended up that Sandy and I were the only ones on the hike, so he asked what we'd like to do?   We asked if there was another subject besides history since we were going to be on his Friday night hike?   He said, "sure, we'll cover the forest."  So off we went.

We left the board walk for 3/4 of a mile and used an old road, which he was familiar with. (It helps to have a tour guide.)   When we finally returned,  we had enough.   So for the day, we have hike 4.5 miles, a good days hike for us!   Afterwards, we moved the motorhome back to the parking lot and settled in for the evening.  There were 3 rigs in the lot.

Today is an off day for us.   Later this afternoon, we'll do a 2 mile hike to a remote tent camp.  Not that we're going to pitch our tent there, but just to have a destination.  We'll have our GPS so if we miss a trail marker, we'll at least know which way home is.

We parked the rig in a corner of the lot, not realizing that it was shaded by the trees this morning.  So we decided to run our Honda generator and bring the batteries up to snuff.  I think we were down about a 130 Ampere-hours, which is way more than we can pick up in a day of bright sun (the sun is shining brightly today.)

Gene

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