Little Pee Dee State Park, SC II

Monday, 19 March 2018

Little Pee Dee State Park, SC

The park ranger told me the park doesn’t have a wi-fi signal and it only gets AT&T and Verizon reliably. My little hot spot uses T-Mobile, which he says is spotty at best here and which I’m not, in fact, receiving. That means no high-tech during this visit.

But let’s hear it for low-tech! I’m vindicated for my preference for paper maps and paper notes! Instead of having to leave the park and go into a town to find a signal, I sat outside at my campsite’s picnic table enjoying the sunshine and working on my route in Pennsylvania. For a little while, a mockingbird serenaded us. It was great.

My campsite sits right next to what I thought was a large meadow area of natural grasses. Just below my site at the edge of the meadow is a park bench. The surprise is that it’s not a meadow – it’s a lake. It just doesn’t happen to have any water in it at the moment, one of the zillion casualties of Hurricane Maria. The storm caused the dam that created the lake to breach and now there’s nothing but a little tiny pond next to a couple of boat ramps that are totally unneeded at the moment. The ranger told me the dam’s just about reconstructed and, in the meantime, the lake bed has reverted to its natural state. I like it the way it is, but you can’t do much fishing or boating on a meadow. When I come back through in 4 years, I doubt if I’ll even recognize the place. Glad I took photos to remember it by.

bench for looking at the lake

my non-lakeside campsite

I go to my next campground on Wednesday and it’s only a couple of hours away. I’ll plan to leave here with enough time to stop in whatever largish town is between here and there to use a wi-fi signal and buy groceries. And for now, I’m just enjoying the peace and quiet.