Springtime in the swamp - alligators as big as canoes and mosquitoes as big as birds - the perfect setting for a camping trip!  We spent four days in the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, camping at Stephen C Foster State Park, which occupies an 80-acre island on the western side of the swamp.  This is the place that was made famous by Walt Kelly’s comic strip, Pogo … we looked everywhere for this little guy ...
                  
The Okefenokee Swamp is a vast bog - 438,000 acres - within a huge, saucer-shaped depression that was once a part of the ocean floor.  Most of the swamp is in the state of Georgia and is protected by the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge.  Native Americans named the area "Okefenokee," meaning 'land of the trembling earth."  Peat deposits up to 15 feet thick cover much of the swamp floor - the Okefenokee is the largest peat-based 'black water' swamp in North America and one of the largest in the world.  The peat deposits are so unstable and spongy in some areas that trees and surrounding shrubs tremble by stomping the surface. 

Last year (2011) a wildfire began with a lightning strike and spread across the swamp, ultimately burning 80% of the refuge.  Large fires are a natural part of Okefenokee's life cycle.  During periods of severe drought, fires burn out vegetation and top layers of peat - intense fires create prairies and occasionally deep lakes.  Even knowing the importance of fire in this environment, it it was painful to see the blackened trunks of cypress and tupelo trees and hundreds of dead pine trees.  

We arrived Thursday afternoon and got busy setting up camp.  Our campsite was primitive, at best - a grassy area for tents, a picnic shelter, a water spigot, and a couple of pit toilets.  Our tents were colorful, but quite a change from the previous week on the cruise ship.

Of course, pitching tents is hard work - some of our jolly campers needed a little rest before dinner.

 And dinner was so fine.  Charley and Vicky tried to light the stove while Dennis (under close supervision) opened the wine.  The cooks – Phyllis, Jane and Andy – put together some outstanding jambalaya, setting a high standard for the rest of the meals to follow. 

Friday's big adventure was renting a small flotilla of boats to explore the waterways around the park.  There are 25 miles of marked waterways, but some of the areas were closed because of low water levels. 

Off we went - with Gary in the lead and the rest of us tagging along behind.  Our fearless leader took us along Billy's Lake and into every unnamed side route.  Sometimes we backtracked to see how it looked going in the opposite direction ...

 Evidence of last year's destructive fire was hard to miss, but there were other areas that somehow were untouched.  What a sad contrast.

Okefenokee has a resident population of 12,000 alligators, and we saw most of them.  No, not really, but there were plenty of them - good incentive to stay in the boat.

We saw a few birds, mostly herons.  It may be that the fire has made it harder to find food, or it may be that we were making way too much noise for most birds to hang around.  This one anhinga sat high on a tree snag and watched us carefully …

After the boat ride, we walked the Trembling Earth Nature Trail.  Normally, we'd expect to see moss-covered cypress trees, freshwater ponds, wetlands, and wildlife - alligators, wading birds, even deer.  Since the fire, everything is different - the elevated boardwalk was destroyed and the trail now winds through lots of burned-out swamp.  It'll be years before this place recovers.

The fire didn’t seem to bother the local butterfly population.  We saw three different types of swallowtails:  tiger, black and palamedes.








Saturday morning, we piled into assorted vehicles and drove around to the east side of the swamp to check out the wildlife refuge.  At the Suwanee Canal entrance, we took a tour on a couple of pontoon boats. 

This side of the swamp was a different world – less fire damage and much different habitat.  We rode down a long canal lined with cypress trees and teeming with boy scouts on a canoe outing.

Our destination was the 6,000+ acre Chesser Prairie.  In the swamp, prairies are untimbered areas (marsh or pond areas) – in Okefenokee, there are 22 named prairies, covering over 60,000 acres.   In normal water levels these areas are flooded with 6-18 inches of water and loaded with water lilies, golden club, and bladderwort, and a variety of sedges and grasses.

 


Here’s a good look at golden club.

Prairies are a great place for spotting wading birds and today we hit the jackpot – a couple of beautiful sandhill cranes posed for us and then strutted across the water and into the brush.

On the way back, these turtle sat almost still enough for picture-taking.  We think these were Florida red-bellied turtles.  (Note that the endangered gopher tortoise also lives around here, but we didn’t get that lucky.)

After our boat tour, we explored the Swamp Island Drive, a 9-mile driving, biking, and walking loop that provides access to dozens of hiking trails through a variety of habitats. 

Along the left side of the road are long, narrow ponds called "borrow ditches."  These ditches were formed due to the excavation to build up the road bed.  The ditches are rich in aquatic and plant life. 

We spotted some hooded pitcher plants, which are pretty common in this area.  Here’s Charley being the best uncle in the world – explaining to Holden how pitcher plants capture insects.

Thanks to a traffic jam and a tip from a guy on a bicycle, we also spotted a mama alligator with one little baby (no clues about what happened to all the rest).  The baby is to the left of the mama gator - not much more than a foot long.  Babies are about 8 or 9 inches long when first hatched, so this one hasn't been around too long.

The end of the loop road is the beginning of Chesser Island, named for the family that lived here for many years before Okefenokee became a National Wildlife Refuge.  In the late 1800s, W.T. Chesser and his family settled on a small island on the eastern edge of the swamp.  They were a rugged bunch, carving out a life in a harsh environment - they ate what they could trap, shoot, catch and grow on the sandy soil.  Cash crops were primarily sugar cane and turpentine.

The house was built from yellow pine and cypress, and grew to include 5 bedrooms, a parlor, a kitchen, and porches on front and back.  The back porch featured a water pump and a bathtub - nicer facilities than we had in the campground!  The roof originally was covered with wooden shingles; this was replaced with tin to protect the house from fires.  Along the same lines, the yard is free of vegetation - this helped reduce the danger of fire and to keep insects around the house to a minimum.

Saturday night campfire was the biggest of the stay – need to burn up all that firewood that folks brought, bought or collected.  Saturday night also time to hoof it down to the bathhouse for a shower, so not everybody had a firelight portrait.

Sunday morning breakfast started before the sun made an appearance, thanks to the arrival of daylight savings time.  These old folks can’t see too well in the daytime, but making grits in the dark required a team effort.

After breaking camp and packing everything into cars for the long drive home, we got ourselves arranged for a group picture.  After a few false starts with the shutter delay, the swamp crew is here (L to R):  Fran, Julian, Mike, Cath, Ann, Nelson (front row); Chuck, Holden, Vicky, Margaret, Jane, Phyllis, Gary (second row); Lance, Charley, Dennis, Andy (back row).