So bear with me, this is a looooong post because we went to Old Santee Canal Park then decided to run up to Lake Moultrie because it was so close. Both are northwest of Charleston, about 45 minutes or so.
Even though it's 'winter' here (I say 'winter' because it was 71 today) and there are lots of trees without leaves, I'm amazed at the colors. I love the mix of green, yellow, and brownish-red in the water plans at the park.
Old Santee Canal is exactly what it sounds like - the old canal that was used to ship crops (originally) downriver to the port of Charleston. It began operating in 1800, but it took 700 men and seven years to build. The canal is22 miles long, 35 feet wide and just over 5 feet deep. I honestly can't imagine digging that canal - it would have been so incredibly hot and buggy. There's more information about the canal at the park website. Now, most of the canal is underneath Lake Moultrie (which was created by building the Pinopolis Dam in ~1940).
Also at the park is an old plantation house, called Stony Landing House. It was build in the 1840s and sits on a gorgeous, breezy rise above the Cooper River and Santee Canal. I took a few pictures of the inside of the house from the porch, since it wasn't open. I love the wood floors and double sided fireplaces.
The Old Santee Canal Park has a couple of miles of boardwalks and hiking trails, and I think we explored almost all of it in about 2.5 hours. The Canal flows on one side of the path and over the hill on the other side is a backwater creek/pond flow. We saw some juvenile skinks, anoles, a couple of turtles, and this water snake (maybe an Southern water snake or a brown water snake).
The water was surprisingly clear, even though the bottom looked pretty soft and mucky. We saw very few fish or other critters stirring up the sediment, which I think helped the water stay so clear. We watched this turtle for a while, it swam down to the bottom (it was maybe 3-4 feet deep here) and looked like it was trying to hide in the algae and sediment.
Steve founds some cool aquatic plants in the backwater and seriously considered bringing some home for his aquarium. This one is a tiny (fingernail size) plant that floats on top of the water like duckweed. I thought it was really pretty, and it's the plant that is making the brownish-red color in the second photo at the top of the blog.
This plant that Steve found was bigger, and looked like it might grow above water. That might be nice for the tank someday too.
Speaking of big plants, check out this really old live oak. I made Steve stand there for scale. Someday enough soil will erode away and that giant will come crashing down.
This might be the coolest thing we saw at the Canal. It's tree wrapped in a vine. You can't tell the size from the photo, but it was about 8-10 inches in diameter.
As I said, after the Canal (and lunch, boy were we hungry at this point!), we drove up to Lake Moultrie. We started out by driving to Pinopolis, a small town with the weirdest squirrels we've ever seen. They're Southern fox squirrels - and they're huge. I didn't take the picture below, I found it online. They were skittish and I couldn't get a good picture. These squirrels are about twice the size of the usual grey squirrel, and they had oddly striped tails - they looked like ring-tailed lemurs!
*photo removed*
There's a boat launch on the south side of Lake Moultrie that is a great place to kayak. There's protected channels and bays, which is good because the lake is huge and when the wind gets blowing, it can get pretty choppy. We drove up to the boat launch then went for a hike. Last time we were here we saw a bunch of alligators - I'm never, ever going to swim in this lake. Because we've had such a dry year, the lake is really low. We were able to walk along the beach out on a small peninsula.
Steve, checking out the minnows.
Look - an osprey nest! When they dammed the river a lot of trees were flooded out. This one must have looked like a good place to build a nest, and it wasn't that tall - maybe 10 feet off the water or so.
These are some sort of small insect or insect larva. There were thousands of them. Nasty.
Some sort of freshwater clam (or mussel? I don't know the difference).
We had a blast today. Seeing the lake again made us want to come back up with the kayaks. It's supposed to stay warm, so maybe we will! I hope everyone had a great weekend!
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