03-12-2019 Okefenokee “Land of Trembling Earth”

Current Location: Stephen C Foster State Park, Fargo, Georgia

Clear at 55 Degrees F at 8AM

When arriving at the Okefenokee Swamp, it is hard to get a true sense of the vastness and complexity of the wilderness.  The heavily managed long leaf pine forest that flanks the entry highway 177 is an open maze of tall thin (by Northwest standards at least) pines with a low understory of glossy green palmetto. 

It is only after a few days of deeper immersion into the landscape, especially by water, that I have come to truly appreciate and be in awe of the treasure that is the Okefenokee.

We signed up for the first morning ranger guided boat ride at 10AM and the skies were still shrouded in a bit of fog as we got on the water.  The boat ride was about 90 minutes, and the ranger was extremely knowledgeable about the swamp, the vegetation, and answered most questions well. 

We had some kids on the boat, and they had the most fun counting alligators, with a total of 76 seen by the time we returned to the boat basin. It was a good way to get a feeling for the waters we would explore the next day in our own kayaks. 

Our decision to make the long drive back toward the east entrance and the visitor center was perfect. With steamy temperatures and rain in the forecast, it was a good day to spend some time in the car. 

As we approached the Visitor Center, the entrance to the Swamp Island Drive was on the left, and we took the slow 15mph drive that meandered to Chesser Island and the Chesser Island homestead.  The homestead is a beautiful presentation of what life was like for the hardy settlers who lived on Chesser Island, mostly self sufficient, surviving on what they could grow in the sandy soils and what they could hunt and fish for in the swamplands. 

It was surprising to see how roomy the home was, but the Chesser family was large, with 9 children, and many more grandchildren living on the island until the mid 1950’s.  They had no electricity, but surprisingly, had a telephone.  We couldn’t figure out how they managed that.

The beautiful cypress boards harvested from the island and milled by the family for the house were gray with age but with no sign of rot.  Old cypress is an amazing wood. 

The logging of cypress in the Okefenokee is an old story, with less than 1 percent of remaining old growth cypress left.  Such beautiful wood, and perfect for building homes in the wet climate of the South.

The day was warming, and the sun felt wonderful on our short hike on the Chesser Homestead trail.  We skipped the boardwalk since Mattie couldn’t go but she loved running along on the sandy trail.  As long time readers know, Mattie loves sand!

The visitor center is aging, according to the volunteer we spoke with, who told us they were planning a new, state of the art visitor center for the following year.  However, to us, the current center seemed lovely.

One of the best features of the Visitor Center was of all things, the movie.  It was through this movie, with very minimal narration, that I began to actually get a feeling for the beauty of the swamp. 

From a human scale, at ground level, and from a car, it is impossible to see the complex mosaic of “islands” (dryer habitats) , cypress swamplands, waterways, and “prairies” (wetlands without trees) that extend for miles in all directions.  The aerial views provided in the video were breathtaking, and really changed my perception of Okefenokee.

The “Storyteller” was another treat.  Up close and personal with an audio animatronic human being is weird, especially when he looked me directly in the eyes while telling his stories. He tells several stories if you push the right buttons. 

Another treat was the “jukebox” where different sounds were played.  We listened to a few, and one that stood out was the hog something or other frog.  The next day, as we paddled in the swamp, I was glad to have heard that sound, because I recognized the difference between the frog sound and the huge bellow of the old alligators that exploded across the river like thunder as we paddled in the early part of the day.

After our day exploring, we returned in time to be sheltered before the thunderstorm hit.  It wasn’t a terribly terrifying storm, but there was a lot of rain, and enough thunder and lightning to make it exciting. The beauty of this storm is that it blew out all the hot sticky air we had been experiencing the previous few days and the weather turned cool and fresh.

When we woke up for our planned kayaking day, the skies were gorgeous blue, not a sign of fog in the air, and crisp enough that we needed long sleeved shirts as we boarded our boats by 9AM.

The day on the water filled out another perspective of the swamp.  The Okefenokee isn’t technically a true swamp, because it is not a pool of stagnant water with trees, it is actually a flowing river, much like the Everglades, it has a current flowing through the landscape. 

We felt that current traveling upstream on Billy’s Lake, turning west and north toward Minnie’s Lake.  It was uphill all the way.  Even the slight current was stronger than we expected, and the paddle upstream about 4 miles to the “Minnie’s Lake Rest Stop” was a bit of a workout.

The canoe trail is beautiful, and in places incredibly narrow. Paddling upstream wasn’t that difficult, but on our trip back down it took a bit of skill to turn the boats to keep from being pushed into the cypress trunks by the current.  We saw a lot of marks on those stumps where people hadn’t been very successful.

There weren’t a lot of birds, which surprised us.  Either we are too late or too early in the season, and there was only an occasional great egret, a couple of cormorants, and a red shouldered hawk.  Toward midday we did begin to hear a lot more birdsong, but in the thick cypress swampland, it was hard to actually see a bird.

What we did see were the alligators.  There were many of them, some submerged with only eyes showing among the pond lilies, others swimming across the channel, and many sunning themselves on logs, looking for all the world as though they were hugging their logs.

As we approached the landing, I was startled to see this really big guy right beside me, and for the only time on the trip, I felt like I was too close to an alligator!  He paid me no mind, and I tried to keep paddling while taking his photo and NOT let myself get pushed into him by the current. Alligators don’t seem aggressive at all and if you leave them alone they will leave you alone.

The landing was interesting, sturdy and roomy, with a shade shelter, and a series of wooden steps that made exiting the boats a bit different, but doable.  With that big gator just a few hundred feet away, I was glad for an exit on the wooden step and not in the deep black water below the step.

We enjoyed our lunch there, watching the dragonflies and bumblebees buzzing around, enjoying the young gator on the log nearby, and appreciating that we had enjoyed the entire trip completely to ourselves.  At about that moment, a canoe showed up at the landing, and as we paddled back downstream, we passed a couple more canoes with people wondering how far it was to the shelter.  We also passed someone in a john boat with an idling motor.  I did laugh to myself imagining that guy attempting to get through the narrow spots farther up the trail.

The trip to the landing took about 2.5 hours, and the current took us back to Billie Lake in just an hour. We decided that we had enough in us to paddle upstream a bit more on Billie’s Lake to get to Billie’s island, where there had once been a logging community of more than 700 people.  We still marveled at how in the world those loggers managed to harvest all that old growth cypress in all that water. 

The landing at Billie’s Island was shaded and lovely, and there were a few kayaks and canoes docked where people had disembarked to hike the short trail to what remained of the community.  With more than 9 miles of paddling under our belts, we decided to call it a day and just lolled around a bit at the landing.  The return trip home was quiet and perfect, and as I paddled up the short access canal to the boat basin, I knew it was on my list of one of my favorite paddles ever.

We are so glad we made the effort to come to Okefenokee.  It is not on the way to anywhere, and yet is such a treasure.  We are especially grateful to Judy, who spent a many seasons volunteering at the refuge for writing about this place and inspiring us to seek it out.

03-10-2019 Okefenokee Don’t Ya Love that Name!?

Current Location: Stephen Foster State Park, Fargo, Georgia

Foggy and 64 degrees F at 9AM

When we left Jacksonville yesterday (on Sunday morning), I confidently headed in the direction of I-295 toward I-10 West.  Seems as though a couple of weeks navigating Jacksonville freeways built my confidence again.  After all, I did learn to drive on the San Bernardino Freeway (currently I-10) back in the 60’s.  It also helped that it was during church time and the freeways were almost empty.  We have noticed traveling through Northern Florida that there are a LOT of churches, almost one on every block.  I had no idea there were so many different versions of the Baptist Church.

Within a very few miles along the interstate, we turned north on secondary highways heading toward our destination.  I was thrilled to once again be on open roads, empty of traffic, and surprisingly also empty of telephone lines and fences. Gorgeous.  I know we can find spaces like that out west, but never thought to find that kind of clean landscape here in the south.  The forests, marshes and swamps of Florida and Georgia are truly wild lands.

We were required to check out of JAX NAS by 11 and couldn’t check into our site at Stephen C Foster State Park until 1.  With a short 90 miles to our destination, we found ourselves ahead of schedule. We looked for a wide spot for lunch, except all the places in the road that had room for our rig were church parking lots and they were full.  Eventually a spot appeared, and we stopped for a pleasant lunch in the warm Florida air and a walk for Mattie before we continued north. 

The Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge is huge, covering 630 square miles in southeast Georgia, including nearly all the world renowned Okefenokee Swamp.  Stephen C Foster State Park is almost in the geographical center of the refuge, and is the only place to camp in an RV in the swamp.  There are three entrances, however, to the refuge lands, which can get a bit confusing.

We found out after arriving at the State Park that the actual visitor center was an hour and a half back near our route, and we should have known to go there first on our way to the state park.  We usually like to use the visitor centers as a good way to get oriented to the landscape and history of where we are, but in this case, there wasn’t much available. 

Also, it is important to note that there is basically no cell phone or internet service in this area, so looking anything up is not possible, not even at the state park office where we checked in and registered for our reserved campsite.  The store is small, and has tee shirts, stuffed alligators, and kids books, but nothing that would give us any more information about the swamp and park except for the map of the canoe trails and the official NWR brochure for the swamp.

What we discovered in that brochure is that most of the “attractions” of the swamp are back at that main entrance on the eastern side.  In addition to the Visitor Center, the area has several walking trails, an overlook tower, the Chesser Island Boardwalk, the Chesser Homestead trail, the Deerstand Trail, the Longleaf Pine Trail, the Phernetton Trail, the Upland Discovery Trail, and the Ridleys Island Boardwalk.

Here at the State Park, we have the lovely campground, a small loop trail that surrounds the campground, and the boat launch.  It is here that we will take the ranger led boat ride and will launch our kayaks to explore the several water trails that are part of the area around the state park.

We settled into our site and adjusted to the warm steamy afternoon with the fantastic fan on full blast before we gave up and turned on the air.  We have no internet, but a complete surprise, we do have a limited cable service, so can get a weather prediction at least now and then.

It was the first day of Daylight Savings time, and we knew that daylight would linger till 8 pm or so.  After an early supper, we decided it had cooled enough that an evening walk would be a perfect way to end the day. 

The nature trail and boardwalk in the vicinity of the boat basin is almost a mile and a half of well groomed trail in addition to the elevated boardwalk that meanders out into the swamp. We learned that the difference between a wetland swamp and a wetland marsh is that the swamp has trees, mostly cypress.

We also learned that logging of cypress was  extensive in the early 1900’s and supported communities of hardy settlers .  We walked through the thickly vegetated swamp, wondering how many varieties of plants it must have.  I was rewarded with a sign at the end of the walk that said the Okefenokee Swamp supports more than 620 species of plants. We also marveled at how in the world anyone would navigate in a swamp.  No clue.  Maybe we will learn about that at the Visitor Center or on the boat ride.

We were also rewarded with one lone alligator, even though everywhere we go there are signs warning of the presence of alligators.  I didn’t see any water birds at all, not one.  We are repeatedly warned not to feed the wildlife, but so far this season, actual wildlife views have been few and far between.  I expect that might change today as we take the boat ride into the marsh and walk on some of the trails at the wildlife refuge.

The campground  here is quite nice, with some sites very private and large, and others a bit more open and smaller.  It is hard to choose sites from the internet, and I tried for the several big pull through sites, but none were available.  Seeing the sites in person, I was glad we didn’t get one. 

They are along a paved road rather than the quiet meandering small road that goes through the park.  The ground is very wet, and yet we are on hard sand and completely level.  In all our campsites this year, including cement pads in many places, we haven’t been this level.  We haven’t bothered to drop the jacks.

We love that Mattie is allowed on the trails and is only restricted from going on the boardwalks in the refuge, but not at the state park.

Another amenity that tickled us are the classic southern porch wooden rockers on the screened in porches. There is one at the registration office, and they are even at the campground restrooms, which are called “comfort stations”.  Maybe they figured campers might need a break from the bugs.  So far, the bugs haven’t been too bad, but there are some truly big, truly scary looking wasps that seem to think our motorhome would make a great place to live.  We will do our best to avoid those creepy critters.

With good weather expected on Monday morning and rain in the afternoon, we decided that we would do the boat ride in the morning and then drive back to the main visitor center in the afternoon.  With clear weather in the forecast for Tuesday, we saved that day for our planned kayak into the wilds of the swamp on our own.