This week I took a day to drive up to Pettigree State Park, about 2.5 hrs away. Its a beautiful area surrounding Lake Phelps, and the shoreline is populated by these amazing bald cypress trees.

When I first moved to the south, from New England, almost 10 years ago I was fascinated by these trees standing in the water. We had marshes and bogs up north, but nothing like the cypress swamps found on the coastal plain. The size of these trees is amazing, some of them must be more than five feet in diameter at their base, and I can only imagine how old they are.