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With its stunning view of the Blue Ridge and woods full of rhododendrons, mountain laurel and wildflowers, Keowee-Toxaway State Natural Area is truly one of South Carolina’s pretty places.
History lovers also will appreciate the park’s museum, which tells the story of the Cherokee people who first lived here and their complex relationship with European settlers.
The park features a rental cabin with a porch overlooking Lake Keowee and a courtesy dock. Camping also is available.
For day use, there’s picnicking, shoreline fishing and hiking trails.
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 Sunset |
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A wide, open beach, fishing pier full of anglers and stories, campgrounds in the oceanfront woods, all in the middle of it all in Myrtle Beach.
Since 1935, a trip to the beach has meant a stay at Myrtle Beach State Park each year for hundreds of thousands of families from across the United States and Canada.
Located in the heart of the bustling Grand Strand, one of America’s most popular and diverse vacation destinations, Myrtle Beach State Park also is a natural retreat, home to one of South Carolina’s last stands of easily accessible, oceanfront maritime forest.
Programming and a nature center offer visitors the chance to learn more about dolphins, sea turtles and the abundant bird and plant life that grace the leafy park.
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 Myrtle Beach |
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Oconee State Park's campground will be closed during the months of January and February for renovations. We will be upgrading the electric and water lines to 40 designated sites. Please be patient while we work and we look forward to providing an improved camping experience to our vistors in 2010. In the meantime we encourage you to try some of the nearby parks for camping they include: Lake Hartwell, Devils Fork and Keowee-Toxaway. The cabins, picnic shelters and all day use facilities are still open and available for rent. Please call the park if you have any questions regarding the CAMPGROUND closure.
Oconee State Park offers the joys of a mountain retreat without the work.
The historic park rests deep in the Blue Ridge foothills, with several picturesque but non-demanding hiking trails and well-kept cabins and campgrounds that have welcomed families for annual trips since the days the park was first built by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression.
The park’s fishing lakes offer bass and bream and the woods are full of wildlife, fur and feather alike.
Oconee State Park also serves as the southern trailhead for the Foothills Trail, an 80-mile wilderness hike on the dramatic Blue Ridge Escarpment on up to Table Rock. Adjacent to Sumter National Forest, the park also serves as a jumping off point to the nearby Chattooga and Chauga rivers, hotspots for whitewater rafting and trout fishing.
For those wanting to take it easy, Oconee State Park is an ideal destination. After all, its mailing address is the town of Mountain Rest.
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 Mountain Rest |
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A unique combination of history and mixed ecosystems makes Poinsett State Park a special place in the woods.
The rural Sumter County park’s setting in the High Hills of Santee where the Midlands sandhills meets the coastal plains has given rise to such unusual sights as mountain laurel festooned with Spanish moss.
The serene setting also offers camping, a fishing pond with coquina bathhouse built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, and clean, rustic cabins high atop a hill where often the only sound is the breeze through the trees.
The mix of steep hills and bluffs, pine and hardwood forests and Lowcountry swamp also is home to a wide range of plant and animal life.
Hiking is a favorite activity at Poinsett, where its own extensive trail system connects to the Palmetto Trail in adjacent Manchester State Forest.
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 Wedgefield |
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Park Video Tour
Current Weather Conditions on Lake Marion at Santee State Park
Santee State Park offers cabins, camping, biking, hiking, boating and fishing in the heart of one of the nation’s best-known outdoors destinations – Santee Cooper Country.
The park sits along Lake Marion, one of the two lakes (the other’s Moultrie) that gave birth to America’s inland striped bass fishery. Together, the lakes cover more than 170,000 acres and now also are known for their abundant populations of huge catfish.
The park’s rondette cabins, including 10 on piers over the lake, have been hosting outdoorsmen and families for generations. A community meeting building, with its large, screened-in grilling facility, also attracts groups.
Out in the lake across from the park is Lake Marion’s flooded cypress forest. Pontoon boat tours into the lake’s swampy headwaters are based out of the park’s marina/park store.
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 Santee |
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Table Rock Mountain provides a towering backdrop for an upcountry retreat at the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Table Rock State Park features two lakes, a campground, mountain cabins, meeting facilities and its historic, renovated lodge.
The park has been one of South Carolina’s most popular since it was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s. Many of its structures are now on the National Register of Historic Places.
Table Rock was home to one of the state’s first formal nature education programs and now serves as a trailhead for the 80-mile long Foothills Trail through the wilderness along the Blue Ridge Escarpment. Trails through the forested park also include one that leads to the top of Table Rock Mountain itself.
The park also hosts a visitors center near the main gate along S.C. 11, the Cherokee Foothills National Scenic Highway.
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Pickens |
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Barnwell State Park may be the best fishing hole in South Carolina that not many folks know about.
A traditional state park primarily serving the people of Barnwell County, Barnwell State Park offers camping and cabins, picnicking and playgrounds, and a community center long favored for meetings and reunions.
There’s also a nature trail that winds around a pair of nice-sized ponds that many locals know hold a good population of bream and bass, some of them surprisingly large.
Barnwell State Park is one of 16 state parks in South Carolina built by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression to provide jobs for the men who built them and recreational opportunities for the people who live nearby.
Such as great fishing. Guess the secret’s out!
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 Blackville |
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Natural beauty and great golf come together at Cheraw State Park.
An 18-hole championship course winds its way through the long-leaf pinelands of the traditional state park, a course that’s earned notice from the Aubudon Society for the way it’s managed to preserve and protect the habitat it shares with uncommon critters such as red-cockaded woodpeckers and fox squirrels.
The park in South Carolina’s northeast corner also boasts Lake Juniper, a 300-acre impoundment built by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression along with the park’s original cabins and picnic facilities.
A boardwalk along the lake helps visitors enjoy the scenic setting, and kayakers particularly enjoy silently scooting into the cypress wetlands at the lake’s edge.
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 Cheraw |
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Check Lake Levels
Spot a loon or a rambling black bear. Fish for trout in a deep, clear mountain lake. Hike through the glorious spring bloom of rhododendrons.
And do it in South Carolina.
Devils Fork State Park provides the only public access to Lake Jocassee, a largely undeveloped 7,500-acre reservoir tucked deep into the Blue Ridge.
Devils Fork is easily reached from S.C. 11, the Cherokee Foothills National Scenic Highway. The park is popular with families, fishermen, scuba divers and boaters, who enjoy Jocassee’s uncrowded setting and spectacular scenery, such as waterfalls cascading into the lake off steep, wooded slopes.
Full campground amenities and modern villas also are highlights of the park. So are hiking and nature trails that provide the opportunity to appreciate sights ranging from rare Oconee bell spring flowers to the fall color show, while bald eagles and peregrine falcons patrol the mountain skies.
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Salem |
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Park Video Tour
Out into the lake but not far from the city, Dreher Island State Recreation Area is a great place to get away from it all.
Only about 30 miles from downtown Columbia on the shores of big Lake Murray – one of the best-known largemouth and striped bass fishing destinations in the South –
the park consists of three islands linked to shore by a causeway and two bridges.
In addition to woodsy hiking trails and lots of places to fish from shore, Dreher Island offers picnicking, camping and lakeside villas.
A tackle shop and boat ramp also is available. The park has long been popular with recreational boaters and fishermen, and has been a launching spot for major national bass tournaments.
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 Prosperity |
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