We chugged into Santee State Park in mid January, after spending a lovely month with friends in Myrtle Beach. We didn’t have much in the way of expectation for what we’d find in the area of Santee State Park. We also didn’t have a timeline of how long we were going to stay. Both of these things turned out to be a good things.
Santee State Park
There wasn’t much in the way of anything going on in the area of Santee, SC. We found out pretty quickly that camping at Santee State Park is the ‘thing’ to do when in the Santee area.
Which meant loud nights at the campground. Which I won’t complain about – most people don’t live their lives in campgrounds or camping areas. And really, we should probably take the campground party people’s leads and maybe have more campfires and do more drinking outside. But so many evenings I find myself snuggled on our couch, reading, while Jake types in rainbow on his computer. And I love that. But, it’s something to consider.
I won’t be taking the party people of Santee State Park’s penchant for loud, elongated burping as an example of a new way to live, however. Holy shit – there is something about Santee that induces loud, long burping apparently. The campground was bathed in the sounds of burps at all hours of the days and nights we were there. At first it was impressive. It quickly turned gross when we realized that at some point the air in the area had to be completely saturated with used burp air and we were breathing that used burp air. Gross dudes!
To escape burp air, we decided to check out the local towns on a Saturday morning. That took us all of two hours – and we were really working to stretch those two hours. We parked in the town of Elloree, walked up and down the sidewalks to the end of town, popped behind the buildings to find a defunct teapot museum situation, poked around the singular shop that was open in the town (“Ya’ll aren’t from round here(.)(?)”), and bought two cups of Sweet Tea at the only game in town – a little cafe. Then we drove over to the ‘city’ of Santee, drove around trying to find a place to walk about – failed, and turned around in the McDonald’s parking lot to head back to the State Park.
I don’t think this is actually SXSW… 
Well, that’s a shame. 
Elloree, SC 
But the sweet tea.. it’s addicting. 
We found a cool alleyway in Elloree – and then got chased out by a dog.
The State Park had ok trails – which provided a bit of space to run on the mornings we were in the area.
Having little to tempt us in terms of exploration did allow me to spend more time playing Roblox with my nephew. He created a Roblox world for me called “I Lov Liz” which had horses and cacti. This was the absolute highlight of my time in Santee. Which is not Santee’s fault. A world called ‘I Lov Liz’ created by my 7 year old nephew is pretty unbeatable by any place.
Another cool thing happened while we were in Santee: our friend Robertwas on The Today Show! We were super stoked for him – and to watch him share his story. Robert is mad cool.
And that was Santee. Four days involving a few trail runs, a few hours of Roblox, a morning spent watching Robert on TV, a defunct teapot museum, and a whole lot of burping.
