Thursday, May 18
They had a pretty passable breakfast in the very empty and huge SpringHill Suites. All the hotels we patronized on that trip that served eggs and meat for breakfast cooked them very well, and there were sometimes very good pastry selections. They had raspberry and blueberry scones that morning, which were great. But as I say, all the hotels on this trip get mixed reviews. The SpringHill Suites in Orangeburg had outrageously long hallways, slow elevators, and a really weird room layout that tried, unsuccessfully, to make us think we were in a suite.
It was raining and it was one of those mornings where it looks like the rain is never going to stop. We weren’t daunted and did our morning routine anyway, including refilling the cooler with ice from their machine and cycling dirty laundry into plastic bags. We were pretty good at traveling by this point and laid the Mexican food gingerly on top of the ice and stuff in the cooler. We’d had to throw out earlier leftovers when they tipped into the ice, and the cheese we had in there was getting pretty waterlogged too.
We hit the road and drove the 40 miles back up North to Congaree, looking for another hike. Because the ground was so wet we decided to stick to the boardwalk this time, which is about a 2.5 mile circuit. I took along an umbrella but closed it soon, we were there to look up into the trees and I really didn’t care if I got a little wet. The silence in the deep swamp with the massive trees and the sound of rain all around was awesome.
There were a few people out, who all walked faster than we did. We saw a lot of wildlife on that hike, including the sad sight of a dead feral pig near the trail and presumably her litter hiding in the woods about 20 yards away, scared of the people. Later on we saw deer, rabbits, and a good number of fox squirrels, a variant of the squirrel we’d never seen before. There were also many butterflies, millipedes, snails, and slugs, though the skinks were apparently all inside watching TV. We stopped at an overview of an oxbow lake and watched turtles of several species and sizes paddle around like they were going somewhere. They have very nice interpretive signage on the Boardwalk Loop Trail, we found Congaree to be such a charming, small National Park.
But it was time to head out and we knew we had a long road in front of us, hoping to get far East in North Carolina before the end of the day. The Google Lady sent us looping back up to the Interstates in Columbia, and we thought that being this close to a big city might mean that we could find a nice restaurant for a good lunch before the road. Sarah found one in the middle of the city, a few blocks from the capitol building, but when we got there it was closed! And the spooky thing was that downtown Columbia was deserted, like a post-apocalyptic movie. This was lunchtime on a weekday, but there were no office workers out and about. It started raining harder.
But we realized there was another place on that block, a Mediterranean restaurant named Green Olive, at which I got a Greek pilsner and an excellent white bean salad. Sarah got lamb shawarma. Two other tables were occupied and the restaurant was as quiet as a church.
Time to hit the road out of the deserted city. Interstates 77 and 20 sure weren’t deserted though. They were filled with trucks and it was pouring as we made our way miles and miles East to Interstate 95. And when we got there and started traveling North, all the trucks and rain came with us.
Finally crossed into North Carolina and the rain let up some, but then the construction started. For all of route 95 in North Carolina, you had a mile of thick traffic going as fast as it could, then a mile of roadwork where the road surface was horrible, the lanes were non-existent, and the traffic sped up! We would break clear and the “roadwork ends” signs would appear, we’d think we were finally out of it, and then a mile later they were back tearing up the highway again. This went on and on, over and over as we hurtled North. Thanks Biden! At one point the Google Lady had us exit onto local roads to circumvent 10 miles of almost stopped traffic.
Our destination was the Holiday Inn in Greenville and we finally exited 95 onto route 264, but still had 45 or so miles to go before we got there. The rain stuck around all that time, but was just a warm mist by the time we got there and checked into a nice 3rd floor room overlooking the pool in the showing-its-age Holiday Inn. It took us a bit of time to decompress.
My theory about there being good restaurants in college towns held up this time, and we drove a few miles over to Jack Brown’s Beer & Burger Joint, which was crowded with young adults. The rain had stopped and the evening was suddenly breezy and hot. Had some excellent burgers and fries there from a very efficient waitress, and I had a Spruce Tip IPA from the Amor Artis brewery.
Back to the hotel and soon to bed, after a wonderful morning walk, lots of rain, and 332.4 grueling miles.
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