In the swamps and on the rice fields

Overslept the Memorial Day Fireworks in the evening and departed at 8 am on tuesday for Caw Caw Interpretive Center on the way out of Charleston. Though we had written about it in our guidebook we haven’t seen it before and it was good, that we stopped by. First, the park ranger immediately knew, that we are Germans and asked us whether we got the recommendation from Iwanowskis guidebook (he even pronounced it correctly!). Second, the landscape is worth being seen, also the bird and wildlife, and, there are lots of trails and an interpretive center.

Caw Caw – named for the native people who originally lived in the area – was once part of several rice plantations and home to enslaved Africans who applied their technology and skills in agriculture to carve the series of rice fields out of cypress swamps. After civil war it went down and, finally, in 1910 hurricanes destroyed the production and farming was over. Since then nature took over again and now it’s a fascinating mixture of cypress forests, marshland, swamp, grassland and waterways with ruins of settlement. Highly interesting!