Georgia Wilderness Society
Edisto River SC Paddle
March 19-21, 2025
Edisto River Paddle Trip
Trip Leader Basil Youman
Curt Cole and I had planned to paddle the Suwannee River, starting at Dowling Park, Florida, on March 19, 2025. Some years ago, Curt, Terry Ross, Cary Hoyt and I paddled to Dowling from White Springs. The trip this year would be 56 miles, south from Dowling to Branford, Florida. The problem was that Lafayette Blue Springs State Park, where we intended to camp the first night, was full, and to boot, we were informed we could not camp at one of the landings that we had considered. Therefore, Curt and I decided instead to paddle the Edisto River in South Carolina.
The next day we paddled from Minnie Gruber down to Givhans Ferry State Park, about 15 miles, stopping to eat lunch at Mars Oldfield Landing, which was a big field next to the river. We passed quite a bit of houses, some nice and some not. Some of them did not look that high off the ground to withstand flood damage. It looked like rain all day, but it held off until we were running the final shuttle at day’s end. After we completed the paddling, I joined Curt since he said wanted to eat in Walterboro, S.C. We had a good meal, even though they don't have country ham anymore at Cracker Barrel. We proceeded to watch a free concert in town also. It was open to the public and it was good, despite it starting to get windy and cold. It got down to 39 the last night, but remained around 75 during the day.
Despite having a couple of situations that didn't turn out, the trip was a success. We managed to see one or 2 people in motorboats. The water was a little high, so we didn't see any sandbars or many possible campsites along the river, and made about 4.5 miles per hour each day. Curt had done this section, but it was about 10 yrs ago, from another GWS Trip.
After we each headed home Friday, Curt checked out some artwork in Walterboro, where they had a beautiful handmade canoe and paddles. ($$$$)
I biked 7 miles at a county park in Savannah. Sorry for those that could not make this trip. It’s the longest black water river in the U.S and almost the world. Hope you can see it some time. Hope to see you on the next GWS Trip.
Wednesday, we drove about 4 hours to Colleton State Park, a campground that had only 25 sites, but we were able to reserve one for 2 nights. We paddled the first day, Wednesday, 9 miles from the state park down to Minnie Gruber Rumph Landing/Stokes Bridge. Back at camp, we managed to a have a small fire that was nice, before we headed off to sleep.
