Columbus County, North Carolina

George and I took a daytrip to Columbus County last Saturday as part of our 10th anniversary celebration week. Why Columbus County, you ask? Because it's an easy 2.5 drive from home, a place we'd never been before, AND because the North Carolina Pecan Harvest Festival was happening in Whiteville.

Getting ready for this daytrip prompted both of us to clean out our cars and get oil changes, since we didn't decide which car to take until late Friday night. (Being busy with work, grad school, and life in general, it's good to have little deadlines like this to get you motivated to take care of the important, but little stuff that can fall through the cracks!)

So, we headed for Whiteville later than expected, but had plenty of time to look around the NC Pecan Harvest Festival when we got there. We missed the parade (too bad) and the tour of homes (would've been interesting), as well as the cooking contest (yum!), but looked around at the arts and crafts, car show, and listend to the Band of Oz. We did look at the pecans, but decided not to buy any.

Whiteville (population 5000+) is the county seat of Columbus County, and was named for Columbus County's first state senator, James B. White, who also founded the city. One place we didn't visit in Whiteville but wish we had os the North Carolina Museum of Forestry. Maybe next time!

Poet A.R. Ammons was born in Whiteville, and grew up on a tobacco farm there.

After walking around the NC Pecan Harvest Festival, we decided to head for Lake Waccamaw State Park near Bolton. The park looked very pretty, but since neither one of us were up for a hike, we decided to hit the Visitor Center. It was unstaffed, but we found the exhibit area, which turned out to be one of the highlights of the day! We watched a very interesting film about Lake Waccamaw, which is a Carolina Bay, and looked at all of the displays too.

After leaving the Visitor Center, we decided to head out and drive the perimeter of Lake Waccamaw. We checked the GPS and headed out of the park to drive around the lake. It was even prettier than I imagined it would be! It was fun to look at the houses too, large and small, vacation and permanent. I stopped and took several pictures.

Although we had a few other places on our list of potential stops, we decided to head home from Lake Waccamaw. It was such a peaceful and pretty way to end our visit to Columbus County.

Columbus County, named for Christopher Columbus, was formed in 1808, and sits on the North Carolina-South Carolina border.

For all of my Columbus County photos, click here.