November 24-25 2012 Okefenokee swamp

Sat we kicked back and relaxed. I took a nap, finished a book, rode my bike, checked out the trading post and interpretive center. John played video games, roasted veges on the grill and we had left over chicken.

They have these camping platforms along the canoe trails in the swamp. Not enough solid ground to camp on. You have to of course bring your own tents and gear. Some of the trails are no motor boats, so you get the real wilderness experience. This is a map of the swamp with the trails and campsites on it. 10-15 miles between campsites, long paddle days. The swamp is 25 miles wide and 38 miles long.

Sunday we headed back into the swamp. We went toward Minnie lake. The trail got much tighter. john is in the middle of the second photo, way ahead of me.

The tall tight trees only had needles on the top. When they have all their leaves in the summer it is too dark for branches below. We never were able to get out of our boats. The swamp was wet as far as you could see.

Thinner passage. Silent, still water. The black water was mirror like, saturated with color. When we came back we let the current take us and floated. It was totally silent, the only thing we could hear was our paddle strokes, some insect and bird calls, leaves dropping. When a bird flew over you could hear it’s wing beats. The only ripples were from our boats and paddles. We hardly saw anyone else. Incredibly beautiful.

John way back behind me. A Spanish moss covered tree from below on the main channel back.

The almost full moon rising over the cypress in the main channel. These trees in the burn have more light and more limbs. John took some nice shots of me.

The main channel back.

November 22-23, 2012 Turkey day in the swamp

John put a turkey breast in the crock pot and we took off boating. Warm sunny day.

John found this little tree frog on my boat in the morning. He scared up an egret in the burn,  a big white bird, there are lots of them here. They would fly ahead, and they fly up again when you caught up, after awhile we were following three.

Couple more birds, and John with the cypress.

Three turtles, John got better photos of the gators than I do, he was braver and went closer. This is how close I got. See the gator on the log??

This log-this is John’s photo, I got  this one on the floating logs and grass. The green grass is not on land, it is growing in floating mats.

This alligator  was the coolest, it actually moved. It glided slowly, silently up stream, never saw a muscle move and there was no wake. We invited Pete and Kate over for turkey dinner. They were going to leave today, but there were no open spots in any of the surrounding campgrounds, so they stayed. There is no where to get food within an hour and a half drive from here, and they didn't have much, and we had a lot.  They brought a pear and blueberry cobbler. They are from Carbondale, Colorado and had a double inflatable kayak and bikes. It was nice to talk to some Colorado people. Very interesting folk. Yummy T day dinner.

Back on the water again today. Yapon holly. It is one of the plants that has adapted to living in the acidic water of the swamp. Evergreen and has red berries. Turkey vultures in the trees.  They looked like thanksgiving turkeys, hiding deep in the swamp till after the holiday!

We had to eat our lunch in the boats, there is no solid ground out in the swamp. It is all floating. I didn’t see this gater John was photographing till I got this close.

We paddled down Billy's lake to the Suwannee river, it runs out of the Okefenokee swamp into the gulf.  On the way back we relaxed in the boats and let the wind just blow us back to camp, while we just soaked up sunshine and scenery.

A burnt cypress stump. Twilight  in the campground.

And on the trees.

November 21, 2012 Okefenokee swamp

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.