Magnolia Springs State Park

We spent a woefully short time at Magnolia Springs State Park in Georgia.  This was a lovely park with so many things to see and do!  We had a nice campsite that backed up on the woods.  It was a little strange that with all of this room they stuck the concrete picnic table and fire ring behind the RV instead of next to it.  Not all sites were like this, and since we weren't planning on cooking out in our short visit it wasn't a problem, just a little odd.

Our campsite at Magnolia Springs State Park

This park seemed to have a little bit of everything.  Of course it had the eponymous spring, which was lovely and full of yellow bellied slider turtles!

Magnolia Spring; it was interesting that (I think) because it fed a 
pre-existing stream, the surrounding area was not nearly so 
clean looking as the springs we saw recently in Florida - only the
spring itself was the beautiful blue color

So many yellow bellied sliders!!  We counted 26 coming at us - clearly
people feed them from the bridge regularly, as they came 
swarming to us (really moving fast!) as soon as we stopped on the bridge

An alligator just off another bridge :-)

In association with the lake and spring they had a trail along the lake and boat rentals.  There were lots of nice looking cottages, a few of which looked like they had a view of the lake.  

The other really interesting thing about this park is that it is the site of the short-lived Camp Lawton, a prisoner of war camp for captured Union soldiers in the Civil War.  They had a short history trail with signs and a couple of ruins, plus an informative museum about not only this camp but others like it.  I don't remember learning much about the conditions in Civil War prisoner of war camps, but they were pretty brutal!  The pictures of the men leaving the camps at the end of the war reminded me of the prisoners in the concentration camps in Germany.  I guess the thing that makes the Civil War camps slightly better is that they didn't just kill thousands of civilians upon their arrival at the camp - in fact, until President Lincoln put a stop to it, there was a regular prisoner exchange between Union and Confederacy that kept the prison populations low and transient - but still, the circumstances were pretty awful.  It was interesting to learn more about this depressing part of our history.  This camp was designed to alleviate crowding at Andersonville/Camp Sumter, and reports from the prisoners indicated that the circumstances were indeed a little better at Camp Lawton, but it only lasted 3 months as just after it was completed Sherman started marching toward the area, and the confederates were worried he would come and liberate the camp.

One of the three redoubts guarding the camp - the only one
still really visible

One final thing about the park I just have to include is the gopher tortoise just outside the nature center.  We didn't make it to the nature center while it was open, but it was cool that they had the tortoise outside, and it makes me think this nature center might have been nicer than most.

Gopher tortoise!  The state reptile of Georgia

I won't make a separate post because we only stayed one night, but we spent our last night on the road before heading to the farm at Ebenezer Park, a county park in Rock Hill, South Carolina.  We were able to catch up with my friend Roddie (my old boss at Bank of America) while we were there, as he lived not far from the park.  He took us to an awesome restaurant in downtown Rock Hill called Kounter, which had lots of delicious and unique food. 

Our campsite at Ebenezer Park.  It was a bit narrow and not
very level and also suffered from having the fire ring and
picnic table behind the RV instead of next to it (again!), but it offered a
bit of privacy and sewer!

I won't bore you with all the amazing food photos we took, but
here was their version of beef sliders - basically half a pan of
Hawaiian rolls sliced in half and filled with a huge beef patty 
and pulled pork - mmm!!

Dining with Roddie

A fun double-bench swing overlooking Lake Wylie at Ebenezer Park

Next stop: the family farm!  Unfortunately the weather looks a little miserable for our first week there, so we won't get much work on the RV done right away.  In a couple weeks we'll be taking a trip with friends to the Louisville area, stay tuned for that!