Lake Time & Birthday Celebrations: Hester’s Bottoms June 2025
Hester’s Bottoms, Mt. Carmel, SC, Site #6
June 21-29, 2025
We decided to spend Steve and my birthdays camping at a lake this year, and decided we really wanted to go back to Hester’s Bottoms on Clark’s Hill Lake. It’s been 4 years since we first camped here, but we knew we would be on the lake and would get good time together, so we set off to Mt. Carmel, SC amidst record heat in SC for June. Every day was over 95, with heat indexes well into the 100’s - it was HOT. We were very glad we were able to cool off in the lake!
Hester’s did not disappoint. The first night, we celebrated my birthday with some fun puzzles and signs as presents and we started in immediately with lots of games! We were able to figure out how to play Cross Crib without the cribbage board, but quickly found out we need to order some new cards because our cards are SPENT! We also dug into Scattergories - Auntie, true to form set our trip off on the right foot when she mistakenly played by “Auntie rules” and played words beginning with “S” though the letter was “P” LOL! Steve even played Scattergories with us later in the week! Spy Alley was also in high rotation, along with Peppa Pig Monopoly, and Grace gave me the best present ever - she agreed to play BOGGLE with me (briefly)!
I know I mentioned it was hot - it was SCORCHING, so we were in the water every day. Auntie and Grace brought their bikes, but we never took them off the bike rack because it was just too damned hot. Thank goodness for lake time! Auntie bought the family an awesome present - a 10’ floating raft called “The Big O (Ophelia)”. We spent HOURS and HOURS in the water, playing games we made up (we did forget Grace’s paddleboard and the waterproof cards - OOPS!) such as “PPT - Person, Place or Thing” and began adding “Toy” and “Person-adjacent” as options. Kaety loves sitting in the water and playing games, but PPT seemed to run on rotation between Po the Panda from Kung Fu Panda 4 and Shien…she was a broken record on those two! We also played “Alphabet Categories,” which Kaety loved and she did an exceptional job - except she always seemed to want specific letters that were someone else’s!
We had planned on having our tanks pumped by a guy that did them the last time we were there, so we did not bring our “poo hauler” to dump mid-way through the week. Unfortunately, we found out once we were there that the guy sold his business and they didn’t have other recommendations, thus we were really worried about going potty in the camper. Fortunately, Auntie saved the day when the folks in the campsites next to us had someone that the owner (Lindsay) knew come pump their tanks, so Auntie quickly talked the guy into doing ours as well! YAY! He told us he comes out there every Wednesday…good to know!
The wildlife at Hester’s was surprising in that we didn’t see many squirrels or even raccoons. We did see a fox crossing the road as we pulled in, so we knew there was wildlife around. We were, however, treated to some great bird watching - a Red Shouldered Hawk, Blue Heron, and Kingfisher were around every day! Also…bees. They were hot too and apparently thirsty - Steve took a drink of a beer he had opened and got stung on the lip by a bee! Thankfully he isn’t terribly allergic, but it was painful and very swollen.
Our last full day there was Steve’s birthday and we relaxed, read books, and played in the water. After we came in, we finally broke out the dolphin piñata we had bought for Kaety’s birthday (but forgot to do!), and he and the girls took some swings and were rewarded with yumminess!
Because we can’t go on a trip without some sort of calamity, we figured out basically as we drove up to Hester’s that the brakes on Steve’s truck were not really working well and we were very worried about driving home, so Tuesday, Steve spent the day in Greenwood, getting his rotors, calipers, and pads in the front fixed (to a hefty sum) so that we would be able to get home. Then Thursday, our dog sitter, Kelly J, texted that the A/C upstairs stopped working. Oy Vey. We get almost no cell service at Hester’s because we are out in the middle of nowhere. We did get WiFi *thank goodness so we could get her text*, but calling on the WiFi was not really do-able, so with his fancy new brakes, Steve had to drive out of the park to try to call the A/C repair place (it was SO FREAKING HOT!). Unfortunately, the place we have used in the past we could never get through to, so he looked up and found several other places…seems like everyone was having A/C issues, because the earliest we could get someone out there was Sunday morning. So, our house sitter (Kelly J) and the dogs had to stay downstairs. The repairman came before we got home Sunday night and fixed the problem. I was terrified we would have to replace the whole system because we have had problems with it before, but no. The issue was that a lizard had fallen into the outside starting capacitor and FRIED himself, rendering the capacitor broken. With a quick replacement and kind service, it was fixed within a couple hours!
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