What is the South Carolina Ultimate Outsider program?
If you visit all 48 state parks in South Carolina, you will receive a certificate and a t-shirt. You will also be part of a mailing list for events that are only for Ultimate Outsiders, like picnics, tours, and an online scavenger hunt.
What do I need to become an Ultimate Outsider?
The only thing you truly need is a state park guidebook. Each park has its own page with a spot to get a unique stamp. This is what you will need to show the park rangers for them to verify that you’ve visited every park. Click here to purchase your guidebook online, or pick one up for free at a state park office.
Something that’s not mandatory, but I HIGHLY recommend, is buying an annual state park pass. This is $99 and covers the admission for anyone in your vehicle at all state parks for a year. Although not every park has a fee, the fees can be up to $12 per person to enter a park. This can quickly add up to more than the $99 you’ll pay for the annual pass, especially if there are multiple people in your car and you’re trying to visit a lot of parks in a year. This pass also gets you into some of the buildings and events, such as Atalaya Castle and the Hunting Island Lighthouse. Click here to purchase an annual pass, or buy one from any state park office.
Something you can do for fun is complete the South Carolina State Parks scavenger hunt with the GooseChase app. There are different items on the list that will require you to either tag your location or submit a photo. For example, you can tag your location when you’re standing on a bridge that the challenge describes, or you can submit a photo you took of a spoonbill and put the name of the park in the caption. Once you’ve become an Ultimate Outsider, you’ll be invited to another scavenger hunt, which may include more than just what’s in the state parks, and you can win prizes.
What do you do at the state parks?
It depends on the parks! Some parks mostly serve as an access point to a lake, where you can boat, fish, or swim. Others have historical places you can learn about, hiking trails, and natural landmarks. Some host events, like guided hikes or festivals. 38 of the parks in the system are considered state parks, 8 are considered state historic sites, 1 is considered a state recreation area, and 1 is considered a state resort. For navigating through this post, you can search for words like “trail” in your browser and it’ll bring you to where I’ve mentioned hiking.
What’s your favorite state park?
I don’t really have one, but I liked the ones in the mountains and at the beaches the best. The ones that come to mind as my favorites are Table Rock, Caesars Head, Devils Fork, and Hunting Island. After we got all the stamps, we made note of which parks we wanted to revisit and what time of year would be best to revisit them.
How did you choose which park would be the last stamp?
As we crossed some parks off the list, we realized that some of the smaller parks don’t always have a ranger in the park office, so we needed to choose a more popular park to guarantee a ranger would be there to check our book. We looked at the parks we had left and determined we would end at Sesqui. This was partly because it’s pretty popular, so we’d be more likely to find a ranger to check our stamps, and partly because we thought it’d be cool to end in the state capital.
How did you visit them all?
We’re lucky to live in Greenville County, where lots of parks are within an hour and a half of our house. Some of the parks were their own day trip, like if we were doing a hike, but there were other times where we visited multiple in a day. For example, we easily visited Oconee, Oconee Station, Devils Fork, and Keowee-Toxaway in one day to get a stamp for each, but we’ve also made separate day trips for each of them. We had a few camping trips where we would camp at one park and visit others that were nearby. We stayed the night with a friend for a weekend trip where we visited five parks.
Can you stay overnight at the parks?
Most of the parks have overnight accommodations. Some have drive-up campsites for your car or RV, some have hike-in campsites, and some have cabins. Hickory Knob is a resort with indoor accommodations and dining services. We chose some of the less popular parks for camping so we could have a quieter place to sleep and we could get to know those less-visited parks better. The less popular ones also tend to have lower fees for camping and more availability. For example, when we got a beachfront campsite at Hunting Island, it was more than twice the cost of a campsite at Givhans Ferry, with only a few sites available on the weekend we were looking at. Each park will have their overnight options listed on their page, if they offer them.
Are all the parks dog-friendly?
Each park allows dogs in outdoor areas, as long as they’re leashed and not disrupting people/wildlife, but might exclude them from certain places, like the Animal House at Charles Towne Landing. Dan and I took turns with things like touring Atalaya Castle while the other stayed behind with Athena. I did get stressed out over having her in some of the places where alligators hang out though.
Can you get married at the state parks?
Some of the state parks have actual wedding venues: Table Rock has the Gaines Lodge, Huntington Beach has Atalaya Castle, and Charles Towne Landing has the Legare-Waring House and Founder’s Hall. Others have pavilions and amphitheaters you can ask about using. If you’re eloping, you have a little more freedom with where to have a ceremony with a pretty view because you’re not having a huge gathering of people that would disrupt other visitors, so you’ll want to call the park office for the park you’re thinking about to see what their policies are. You can read more here about how to elope in South Carolina, and I have some suggestions here for where to do it!
I’m scared of alligators and bears. How do I avoid them?
I’ve never actually seen bears in South Carolina, but I know they tend to be in the mountains. You may see warning signs for alligators at pretty much any park that’s south or east of Columbia, but they tend to not come out in the colder months. If you’re in a place where there may be gators and you don’t want to see one, try to stay away from fresh water, including boardwalks over marshes. At Hunting Island, we were told that the gators tended to be further inland, away from the ocean. I stumbled upon one in the tall grass by the observation deck at Huntington Beach.
Are there national parks in South Carolina?
South Carolina is home to Congaree National Park, a cypress swamp east of Columbia. There are also several other places in the national park system:
National Historic Sites: Charles Pinckney, Ninety-Six
National Historic Park: Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie, Reconstruction Era
National Military Park: Kings Mountain
National Battlefield: Cowpens
National Historic Trail: Overmountain Victory (NC, SC, TN, VA)
And now, here’s a list of all 48 South Carolina State Parks and our experiences with them!
