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Courtesy of the University of North Florida

and  Jack Woodward

On Saturday, Dot and I went to the Okeefenokee swamp at Stephen Foster State Park in Georgia, near Fargo. The 'plan' was for Dot to sit and do nothing since she pulled a muscle on last weekends outing. But she said she wanted to paddle and she wasn't going to push herself for fear of hurting herself all over again. I'm sure most of you know how it is to argue with a woman. 'Nuff said. But I will admit, because she did help with the paddling we were able to cover a lot more territory than we had planned on doing. And that turned out to be a good thing because we saw some scenery we wouldn't have seen with just me paddling. 

This is leaving the main dock area heading to the main channel in the swamp which happens to be the Suwannee River.  

As we were getting the kayak ready for launch, we saw a whole gang of people putting-in in canoes. I think we counted 11 or 12 canoes. Some with just two people, some with three. It seemed to be mostly families. They left the dock area well ahead of Dot and I, but within 30 minutes we had passed all of them. I think there were a few of them that were a bit envious of us and wished they had the speed of a kayak. 

Ahead of the canoe gang and heading toward Billys Island. There is a nice dock and beach landing at the island. We were going to stop and walk around but didn't. Next time maybe.

We saw a lot of these water lillies. And they are fragrant.

Dot liked the greens in this view. They just didn't 'translate' well on 'film'. It was one of those 'you just had to be there' things.

I'm hoping one of my biologist friends can tell me what these are. They are sort of like dragonflies but smaller. And I think they are mating.

From Chuck Hubbuch: They are damsel flies.

There were a lot of them as you can see.

A lily beginning to bloom.

The Okeefenokee is made for canoes and kayaks. One can also rent jon-boats with small outboards at the dock area. I told Dot we may do that one time just to give ourselves a paddling break. So, we did have to deal with the occasional powerboat. I will say that every one we came to slowed down a lot when they got near us. About half of them were there to fish and the other half just to enjoy the scenery. But they were ALL courteous.

We went off-trail to explore a bit. We didn't get far down this path because of logs in the water. But the kayak does float easily over the lily pads. 

Some of the lilies were pretty stunning, like this one.

Blue sky and blue water. The weather people said the high for the day was going to be in the mid 90s. We are pretty sure it was that all right. Thankfully, very thankfully, we did have a nice breeze blowing most of the day. That and the occasional splash we gave ourselves helped to keep it bearable. But it was HOT!

And what is the Okeefenokee without alligators. During the course of the day we easily saw 30 or 40 of them. The biggest ones we saw were in the 10 foot range. Most of them were 5 to 6 footers. And with all the people that visit here, these gators are quite used to being around people. At Guana Lake we can't hardly get within 50 feet of the gators unless they are sleeping on the banks. Here at Okeefenokee you can get close . .  much closer. The closest we got to one, a 6 footer was . . well Dot said we were two feet away, I think it was closer to three feet away. Regardless, literally spitting distance. 

Oh yeah, another outstanding feature of the Okeefenokee are the cypress trees. We saw . . thousands!

One of the main trails heads north to a series of small 'lakes'. The trail goes through a cypress forest. 

In places the trail was like this, fairly wide.

In other places, we were dodging and zig-zagging between the trees. 

But the cypresses sure made for some beautiful scenery.

We pulled off here for lunch. I got out of the boat for a stretch but Dot preferred to stay in the boat. And you can bet your bippy I kept my eyes on the area around me. Oh yeah, bad news. The dang yellow flies (the flying teeth) are out. We did have to use bug spray. Before we sprayed down, I took a hit on the front of my neck. OWW! But what a beautiful spot for lunch eh?

We saw this guy in the water across from where we had lunch. Dot is a very good gator spotter. 

Lovely.

Dot said I had to take a picture of this trunk in the middle of this picture for Kathy Westberry. Kathy says that trunks like this look like dress skirts. The boat trail went just to the right of that tree. 

Paddling through trees like this is pretty neat.

Talk about peaceful.

This is the way you see most of the gators. We only saw one that had pulled his whole body out of the water to lay on a bank. 

The Okeefenokee is a black water swamp which makes for some nice reflection pictures.

Well we hope you enjoyed our outing as much as we did. We ended up paddling right at 8 miles. Even though it was about a hundred mile drive to get there, as Dot said, it was well worth it. We definitely plan on going back here again. 

Enjoy !!

P.S. 

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