Ultimate Outsider

I’ve made references in my past few posts about my journey to becoming an Ultimate Outsider. So, what is an ultimate outsider, anyway? I’m here to tell you all about it, how I discovered it, and how I plan on achieving this elite status.

At the end of August 2022, a friend of mine and I planned a hike to a local waterfall with our families. She had heard about this place from another friend. So we had some vague directions, and we headed out to do some hiking, with our bathing suits on under our clothes. Our plan was to meet at the trailhead and hike to the waterfall together. When we were almost there, we were still well ahead of our friends, however we spotted one of our state parks, so decided to head in there to take a mini hike as we waited for them to catch up. We paid for the park entry, and as we were meandering around, saw an Ultimate Outsider stamp. As you may remember from my National Parks posts, I am a sucker for a good stamp. I had no clue what this stamp was all about but I was going to stamp something. I grabbed our daily park pass that we had just purchased and began stamping away!

We took a short hike around the Battlefield of Musgrove Mill State Historic Site and then headed inside to the little gift shop to look around. The very nice workers inside started a program that lit up a map and had a narrative describing all that took place around the site and why it was historically significant. Shortly after, my friend and her family arrived and joined us in the gift shop. After chatting with the workers in the gift shop, one of them explained about the stamp that we’d just used and got us set up with our own Ultimate Outsider book.

Basically, there are 47 state parks in South Carolina and each park has its own unique stamp in an area that is accessible even if the park is closed. The free book has a page for each state park that explains a little about what you can do in the park and some special features. Stamp each of the 47 spots and at your last park, show the park attendant and you get a “prize”. There’s also a bonus of collecting the State Capital stamp at the State House to get an extra prize. As you know, I’m not going to go to all 47 parks and NOT get this extra stamp. After stamping our very first page for Musgrove Mill Battlefield, we decided that it would make a lot of sense to purchase an annual pass that would get us into each park and try to knock out this Ultimate Outsider thing by August 2023.

Here we are, four months in and almost half way through our South Carolina state parks. That day, we went home and booked two camping sites so we could spend a weekend at Devils Fork and Huntington Beach State Parks. We’ve also taken several day trips to nearby parks. At this point we’ve visited:

Ideally, I would love to DO something in each of these places. At the very least, take a hike with my husband and our dog. Realistically, sometimes it’s raining (see Keowee-Toxaway above) and I feel successful if I get the stamp and don’t get drenched in the process. After each adventure, I post pictures on instagram @goforthexplore or @bcgoforth. Feel free to check out my posts going back to the end of August 2022.

What have we learned in the process? South Carolina is sometimes a bigger state than we think and sometimes it’s also incredibly small. For us, living in the upstate, it will be hard to get some stamps on the coast. However, sometimes we can get up to five or six stamps in one day. We’ve also learned that this state is pretty cool. There are a lot of places that we never would have ventured into had it not been for this program. We’ve also learned some history of our state in this process. A bonus is the wonderful people that we meet along the way. At Woods Bay we met a guy flying a drone checking for any damage to the boardwalk after some severe weather. The only people at the park were him and us. We talked to him for probably an hour about where we were in the Ultimate Outsider journey and how it was such a fun thing to do. Overall, we have a deeper connection to our home state and a greater love for the place we were raised and all of the natural beauty that surrounds us on a daily basis.

So, what’s next for us? We are not quite to the half way point. My goal is to complete this by August 2023. We plan to schedule another weekend camping trip or two to get some of the harder to get to stamps. We also plan to continue and take day trips whenever we can. Right now, we are just completing a week of freezing temperatures in our state. However, we have beautiful Spring weather right around the corner. The thing about South Carolina is, it’s never really all THAT cold. So, whether or not you’re in South Carolina, head to your local state park and take advantage of all it has to offer. If you’re lucky enough to be a South Carolinian, when you make it to your closest state park grab one of the free Official Guides to South Carolina State Parks and see where it takes you as YOU goforth and explore your great state.