Congaree National Park

If you are into old growth hardwood forests combined with swamps – this is a park for you! What you can do at this park depends on the time of year you visit it. The main trail area spends parts of the year under water as it is a floodplain for the Congaree River (~10 floods per year). During this time, you can spend the majority of your visit in a canoe exploring the park – although if the water gets above 8 feet – even this can be dangerous. During non-flooded times, you can enjoy the 25 miles of hiking trails along with the main 2.5 miles of boardwalk trail which is where the majority of visitors spend their time. The park is also famous for its synchronous fireflies which appear for a few weeks each year in May and draw huge crowds.

When to Go

The park can be visited year round, but if you are into hiking instead of canoeing – we would recommend the late spring / early summer time. The park should be mostly dried out during this time and you’ll also likely not have to worry about mosquitos as much. The park actually has signage for how bad the mosquitos are each day similar to what you would see for “Fire Risk” signs around the country. If you are interested in the fireflies – your only option is a 2-3 week period in May which is announced by the park.

How to Get Here

This is a pretty easy park to get to. You just need to choose where you are coming in. The park is located within 30 minutes of Columbia, 2 hours of Charleston, and 3 hours of Myrtle Beach. As we will note below, you don’t need a ton of time to visit this park – so we would recommend merging a trip here with a trip to one or more of these locations. Charleston is especially high on our list given all of the history in that city along with a couple of other National Park units.

Trip Length

For the park itself, you would be fairly hard pressed to spend more than a day or two here. There just are not enough trails to hike or activities to keep you busy for longer than that – so we highly recommend merging this trip with a visit somewhere else in the region such as Charleston where you could easily spend several days site seeing.

Where to Stay

Given the park is only 30 minutes from Columbia – there are tons of options for any budget when it comes to lodging near the park. The park itself is in a very rural area without any immediate lodging options, but 30 minutes is not a bad drive at all! There are some camping options within the park, but at least on our visit – they didn’t seem very utilized. None of the campsites have vehicle access, so you will need to park your car and walk your gear to the site.

What to Do

There are essentially two things to do at the park – hike or canoe. And the weather is likely to dictate which of those options is your best bet for the day(s) you are in the park. Before you start either of these though, make sure to visit the Harry Hampton visitor center to watch the park movie, check out the exhibits, and talk to a park ranger about the best trails that day. If you happen to be visiting in May – you can also ask if you are lucky enough to be there during the synchronous firefly time which attracts a large portion of the visitors each year to this park.

There are about 25 miles of trails and 2.5 miles of boardwalk at this park and the majority of these trails start behind the visitor center. You will start on the boardwalk and will have the option to leave the boardwalk to take several other loop trails – each of which goes further out than the other. When we visited the park – one of the main bridges had been damaged in a flood and therefore some of the outer loops were just out and back trails instead of loops. We would recommend the following walks/hikes:

Boardwalk Loop Trail – 2.5 miles (1.5 hours) – Easy

The boardwalk begins at the Harry Hampton Visitor Center. Make sure to pick up a trail guide as there will be around 20 stops on the boardwalk which will be interpreted by the guide. It is an easy stroll and you will get to see the old growth forest the park is built around which includes bald cypress trees and their “knees” which spike up from the tree roots to give stability during the various flooding events. In addition to the bald cypress trees – you’ll see loblolly pines, oak, and maple trees along with “palmettos” which look like small palm trees.

Weston Lake Loop Trail – 4.8 miles (2.5 hours) – Moderate

The “4.8 miles” here includes the boardwalk loop trail above, so it is really only about 2.3 additional miles of walking. In addition, the park labels this as “Moderate”. It seemed like a pretty easy walk for us – but it isn’t boardwalk, so that may be why the park classifies it the way it does. You will continue to walk in the old growth forest here and see plenty of bald cypress trees and their associated knees. One main difference compared to the boardwalk trail, is you will walk out to Cedar Creek and spend a lot of time walking alongside it which gives you a idea of the water in the park that you can’t get as much of just on the boardwalk. You’ll have good chances to see birds and we also came across a Carolina Wolf Spider which was jumping around on the trail. You will meet back up with the boardwalk trail at Weston Lake which looks like a river more than a lake. We saw a couple turtles swimming around and we were told there were a couple water moccasins around the area as well.

The Oakridge and River trails go even further out with the River trail going to the banks of the Congaree River which floods the park several times a year. Due to flood damage, these were out and back trails rather than loops for our trip – so we chose not to do them. We would certainly consider them on another trip though.

We also did not do any canoeing on our trip, but this is always an option. Ideally, you want the water to be in the 4-7 foot range on Cedar Creek – so ask a ranger at the visitor center for current water depths. The water was less than 3 feet on our trip, so we would have spent more time carrying our canoe than paddling. You can rent canoes in Columbia, but you’ll need a way to get them out to the park. A better option may be to find a local outfitter to give you a guided tour via canoe along the 15 mile Cedar Creek Canoe Trail. There is apparently even occasional alligators along the trail!