The Hiking Adventures of Gadget & Goose

After we'd packed up the Camry on a Wednesday morning and were on the road headed to Vogel State Park, Gadget casually asked me, "What do you think this trip is for?". Glancing down at our hands intertwined over the middle console of the car, my ring finger might have twitched a little as the brief thought ran through my mind that maybe this was the trip I've been fantasizing about for years. Quickly dismissing that idea, I smiled and said, "To relax and have some time to ourselves, and enjoy nature", as that's the purpose for any vacation we take.  We rushed getting to the park to get our favorite walk-in campsite, Site Q. It's up a steep hill and pretty isolated from other campers, being at the end of the park and footsteps away from the Chattahoochee National Forest. A trail leads into the national forest and to a pretty stream encapsulated by large boulders, which makes for a beautiful picnic or napping spot, and is an added bonus to the b

WARNING :  Very little hiking (or much of anything, really) went into the making of this vacation. But for the sake of documenting our adventures, I decided to go ahead and write about this wonderful trip anyway.  After weeks of fidgeting in anticipation of our summer vacation, on a Wednesday morning, the time had finally arrived. The Camry was loaded the night before, and the alarm was set for 5:30am, like any normal week day.  In the early morning fog, Gadget, Lily & I set forth on a 4 and 1/2 hour drive to Edisto Beach, South Carolina. When Gadget and I first met almost eight years ago, I was practically a part-time mermaid, and on the other hand, he was neither a fan of swimming, nor sandy, hot, sunny, crowded beaches. But, give the boy a stunning, untouched, lonely beach like this, and he'll never want to leave.  There are two camping areas at Edisto Beach State Park, both of which accommadate tent camping & RV camping. One