After leaving Calhoun Falls State Park on Lake Russell, the Beavers headed down the road into McCormick County, where two final state parks along Lake Thurmond awaited. The first was a state park unlike any we had ever seen.
Hickory Knob State Resort Park is home to a golf course, motel rooms, a swimming pool, and a buffet restaurant. There’s also an archery range, a skeet shooting area, and many other dedicated recreational areas. This would make a great place for a group retreat. In fact, Tiffany and I were serving as unofficial scouts for our church’s small group to see if this would be a great place for us to come for a weekend.
Driving into the park, we could tell that this area had had a ton of recent rain. While we were at Hamilton Branch (also on Lake Thurmond) a couple of days prior, we noted that the lake was up. The entry to Hickory Knob showed fairly significant flooding along the golf course area and near the roadways. (We also saw the cutest little fawn with its mom on the way in…so tiny!)
We first entered in a big open lobby/hang-out area. There were a couple of pianos, a conversation area around a fireplace, a pool table, and a ping-pong table. I sat down at the piano and the girls had fun with the pool table. Outside, we walked around and found a tetherball area as well.
The trail closest to the main area is called Beaver Run Trail, so of course we had to go walking a little bit (though conditions were wet). We found a geocache, and since bellies were getting empty and we still had one more stop to go before lunch, we went back to the car.
On the way out, we spotted the Guillebeau House, a historical structure from the 18th century. Why the French name, you ask? Well, in the second half of the 18th century, there were a group of French Huguenots that came and settled in the area. Nearby is a marker at the place where they worshiped over 250 years ago, which I visited while geocaching about 16 years ago. They called the area New Bordeaux, and even today, that place name exists in a few areas. The Guillebeau house is the only surviving structure of that settlement, and it was relocated here to the park about 40 years ago.
It was then just a short 15-minute drive to our final park of the weekend: Baker Creek State Park. Below are a few more pictures of our time there, and perhaps you may decide to take a group out here for a weekend away!
Beavers in the Park 