March 9 - April 15, 2023: Santee State Park

 We left River Junction on March 9 to return to Jane's Orlando brother's house and her Kansas sister's visit to Florida. We picked Jane's sister up at the airport on March 10. Her Kansas sister's visit ended on March 16 and we didn't have anything planned until early April when our Virginia daughter's family and Jane's Tennessee sister both planned on visiting central Florida. So we ended up staying with Jane's parents until early April. I made myself useful during this long stay as my in-law's driver. When I wasn't driving or bicycling, I was able to work on our 2022 Federal tax return and my quilt programming. I made significant progress on the program which was satisfying.

After the early April family visits, we left Florida on April 11 for Santee State Park in SC. We stopped overnight at the SC I-95 north welcome center and then arrived at the SC state park on Wednesday April 12th. We had reservations at the park until Saturday April 15th. Here is the camper at our campsite.

Santee State Park is about 2500 acres large on the shore of Lake Marion.

The park has two separate campgrounds and 30 "cabins." Some of the cabins, two sets of five, are situated on piers.

The cabins were several miles away so I visited them on one of my bike rides. As I approached the cabins, I noticed various signs with one of them catching my attention since I hadn't recalled seeing one similar anywhere else. It was a warning about vultures damaging parked cars.

We stayed at the Lakeshore Campground which has about 100 sites. Despite its names, the camp sites were not on the shore with the closest sites still a short walk away, say 25 yards. The other campground, Cypress View, has about 50 sites and was close to the cabins, park store and park welcome center. Fishing and boating are main park attractions and unfortunately there aren't any designated swimming areas in the park. However we did see some kids wading in the lake and swimming is permitted.

The non-pier cabins were labelled lake shore but were actually situated in nicely wooded locations away from the shore. Among the cabins was a climate controlled community meeting place called the Village Round with adjacent shelters, one for grilling and the other with long tables and chairs.

The park has a nice 7.5 mile long bike path loop. The path had gradual elevation changes and sections with a fair amount of roots but no rocks. The path was not narrow so the impact of roots could usually be diminished by moving from side to side within the path. Basically the path was not tremendously challenging although I did end up losing control and rapidly dismounting one time. My front wheel got caught in a curve on a root that was running parallel to the path. Fortunately I saw the problem coming soon enough that I was able to disengage from one of my pedals and remain upright with the help of a nearby tree when the wheel got in the root. So the bike went down but I didn't.

Our next stop will be the Richmond, VA area to visit with my sister and our VA daughter's family. My sister recently moved to Beaverdam, VA from southern NJ.