We took the boats out on one of the canoe trails, to Billy’s Island. It is a beautiful 70 degrees +, sunny, gentle breezes. The trees are spectacular, but next to the 1000 year old trees we saw in the Frances Biedler sanctuary, these looked pretty small. This area was logged until the 1930’s when it became a park. This is how big they grew in 65 years.
The Okefenokee refuse is 402,000 acres, 38 miles north to south and 25 east to west. It is a vast bog inside a huge, saucer-shaped depression. Okefenokee is a European rendition of the native American words meaning ‘land of trembling earth’. Peat deposits up to 15 feet thick cover much of the swamp floor. These deposits are so unstable in spots that one can cause the trees and surrounding bushes to tremble by stomping on the surface. When bigger boats go by the wake in the water keeps going rippling the ground around the water. Really eerie. We are paddling in canals that were cut through the swamp. It would be impossible to travel the swamp with out a boat, besides the unstable ground the growth is so thick there are no land marks and you would become lost immediately.
The bus at Stephen C Foster campground. John in between the Five Sisters. He rudely said that two of them are dried up old hags. It is lucky they didn’t drop a branch on him. The forest is burnt behind him.
The cypress are conifers, but they are deciduous. The needles turn bright orange in the fall, then fall off. The trees are draped with Spanish moss. The water is dark brown, like dark tea from the tannins in the peat and decomposing plants, it looks black. It has a mirror like surface that reflects everything. Very beautiful. A turtle sun bathing on a lily pad.
Another turtle reflected in the water. It is a Cooter or a slider- not sure which, and this ones shell is about a foot long. Nice reflections.
Spanish moss and fall cypress needles. This golden silk spider is about 3 inches from the tip of one leg to the other. It was on a web between two bushes, about a foot off the ground. We were eating lunch on a log and noticed it about 6 feet in front of us. It blended in really well. Really discourages bushwhacking through the bushes here.
John at the dock of Billy’s island. It was once a logging camp and a whole city was built here. 600 people lived here. There were two hotels and movie theatre. We saw the cemetery. The rest of the city is being reclaimed by nature. You can only get out of the boats at the docks or platforms, what looks like land is the peat mats, with vegetation on top. If you step on the edges of the by the water , you just sink thru them. Even on the islands there is too much mat around the edges to get to solid ground. Spanish moss backlit by the late afternoon light.
John between cypresses. One of the three alligators we saw on our trip today. The first one silently slipped into the water as I paddled by near shore. The others just hung out. They are reptiles and when it is cool(it was in the low 70’s today)they can’t move very fast, they just lay in the sun soaking up warmth. Even when it is hot, they mostly just lay around. They only eat once a week, and small animals. They like to swallow their foot whole, they don’t chew things up. They don’t bother humans unless we corner them or harass them. They blend in really well too. Crocodiles are the aggressive ones. There are very few in the US, only a few in the tip of Florida.
Cypress and reflections.
Suep speeding by. The entrance to the Stephen C. Foster state park.
Sunset light on the trees reflected and sunset.
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