epic okefenokee adventure, part I

1,000,000s of stars

over 600 miles in the car
100s of sounds in the night
more than 32 bug bites
about 17.5 miles paddled in canoes
9 gallons of water
at least 8 square inches of bad sunburn
3 alligators spotted (zero photographed)
3 lakes
3 people
2 canoes
2 nights
1 campground
1 camping platform
1 ridiculous thunderstorm
1 epic adventure

This plan germinated back in September on the hike at Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park.  Marius expressed interest in checking out the Okefenokee Swamp which coincidentally had been one of the places I was scouting online for a possible hike.  A couple of weeks ago, I started looking into making this a reality for my next non-working weekend, October 6-7.  On further investigation, I discovered that a swamp is not really hikeable.  There are only about 8 miles of hiking trails in all 438,000 acres of the swamp.  However, there are canoe trails leading to camping platforms out on the swamp.  We decided to forge ahead with the plan, reserving a campsite for Friday night just north of the swamp and a platform in the swamp for Saturday night.

Friday couldn't come soon enough!  As soon as I was done with class, I hurried home, tossed all my gear in the car, and drove off to pick up Marius and Dan.  We headed into Atlanta's Friday afternoon traffic and inched our way south.  After a stop at Walmart to stock up on water (3 gallons per person), and a small argument with my GPS in the dark, we finally arrived at Laura S. Walker State Park south of Waycross to check into our campsite with about 30 minutes to spare - at 10 PM we would forfeit our reservation.  We set up the tents and then used Marius' handy Jetboil stove to make a late dinner - whole wheat linguine with pesto and shrimp.

campsite in the dark

I THINK it rained that night, but I'm not sure.  There was definitely a constant drip from the trees even after we got up in the morning, and the rainfly was soaked on each tent.  We awoke to thick fog, ate our oatmeal, repacked the tents into the car, and headed off for the swamp, first taking a leisurely drive by Laura S. Walker Lake at the edge of the campground.  The fog was thick enough that I had to keep my speed down in quite a few places in order to feel safe driving in it.  And my gas light came on so we were searching for a gas station through the fog as well!

laura s. walker lake in the fog

almost to the start point!

We got to Okefenokee Adventures at the Suwannee Canal Recreation Area just west of Folkston before 10 AM, the time by which you're supposed to be on the water if you're going to camp in the swamp.  The chatty women behind the counter finally went through all most of the paperwork and sent us on our way.  We pulled up to the canal where two canoes, a double and a single, were set out for us with paddles and life vests.  Packing all our gear in the canoes took a while, especially trying to balance out the loads fairly between the two canoes.

marius and dan sorting through our stuff

Finally, we were off!  Dan chose the single canoe, so Marius and I took the double.  We admired the beauty of the canal's mirror-like reflections, the cypress trees, and spanish moss "dripping" from the trees.

cypress trunk with spanish moss

reflections on the canal

 After two miles on the main canal, we reached a branching where we turned off to the left onto the Pink Trail.  Here we spotted our first alligator - Marius saw it moving through the water, I saw the snout, eye, and back barely in view before it sunk out of sight.  No chance to grab cameras...  Once we were off the Suwannee Canal, there were a lot fewer trees.  This area is called "Chesser Prairie" - swamp prairies certainly are a lot different than those in the middle of the country!

snack ,water, and sunscreen stop as we turned off the main canal

chesser prairie

yellow marks our route - start upper right, end at monkey lake

The above map shows about 1/16 of the entire swamp.  Gotta love Google maps!  It's now getting a bit late, so I'm going to call this the end of part I.  More to come...