Hi, I’m Christine, and I’m a photographer based out of Greenville!
Over the years, I’ve taken couples to so many beautiful outdoor places around upstate South Carolina, including some of our state parks. In 2022, my husband, my beagle, and I became Ultimate Outsiders, which means we visited every state park in South Carolina!
The only thing you truly need in order to become an Ultimate Outsider is the state park guidebook. You can pick one up for free at any of the state park offices, but you can also buy one online from the state parks website. Each park has its own page in the state park guide book and a space for a unique stamp that you’ll find at the park. Once you’ve gotten a stamp for each park, you can take the book to any state park office, and a ranger will check your book for all of the stamps. They’ll sign an Ultimate Outsider certificate for you, you’ll get an Ultimate Outsider t-shirt in the mail, and you’ll be added to an email list for Ultimate Outsider events.
I also recommend getting a Park Passport, or the annual state park pass, if you want to visit multiple in one year. We’ve even met some people who have an annual pass just to visit the park closest to them. Some parks charge up to $12 per person to enter, but your park pass covers admission for everyone in your vehicle to any state park for a year. This will be helpful if you’re trying to visit parks with family and friends, or if you’re trying to go to a lot of parks in one year. You can buy a Park Passport at any of the state park offices or from the state park website.
We’d picked up a guide book from one of the parks, but we hadn’t considered actually trying to get all of the stamps until we talked to a ranger about things that are found in other state parks. Even though people from out of state always talk about the beaches here, neither of us had really spent much time on the coast until we started the Ultimate Outsider challenge. As we learned more about the parks, we realized that there were so many things in our state that we hadn’t seen yet, like spoonbills, alligators, or a sunrise over the ocean.
Most of the parks in South Carolina are an easy day trip if you live in the Upstate. We made some trips to one specific park, and some trips to get a few stamps in one day. We visited other parks during overnight trips, like taking a few days to camp at a park or staying overnight with friends. After about a year and a half, we finally got our last stamp, becoming Ultimate Outsiders! We finished the challenge at Sesquicentennial State Park in Columbia, the state capital.
People always ask me which park is my favorite. It’s a hard question because they’re all so different and so many stand out to me, but I’ve narrowed it down to four. One is Hunting Island, which is on a barrier island near Beaufort and Hilton Head. I love that the campground is so close to the ocean, and it has a really cool trail through the palm trees that leads to a huge driftwood beach. My other three favorite parks are right here in the upstate: Table Rock, Caesars Head, and Devils Fork. I love mountains, and these are the three parks where I’ve seen the best views of them. There are waterfalls scattered throughout each of them, and there are plenty of hiking trails to choose from.
Visiting all the state parks pretty much took us to every corner of the state, and we saw a lot of places we probably wouldn’t have been to otherwise. Even though we learned a lot at the parks, we also ended up Googling so many things we saw along the way, like the wildlife, plants, and architectural styles. We learned a lot about historical events and their impact on different parts of the state, as well as the industries that bring people to different cities.
Since my husband and I grew up outside of South Carolina, we kind of felt like we got caught up on what we would have learned about this state in school if we had grown up here. We stopped in so many unique places along the way to parks, we talked with so many people, and we’ve made friends with other people who were trying to become Ultimate Outsiders. If you’re looking to spend more time outside or if you want to learn more about your state, head to your nearest park and pick up a guide book!
To read more details about our adventures through all of South Carolina’s state parks, I’ve written a blog post on my website with our experiences at each park!
