Beginning of the End; Swamp Day Three, Part I

The last day in the swamp was somewhat bittersweet.  It was a great day of paddling, and the night before had been nicer that the first night (no dew), but I also knew that the trip was nearing its conclusion.

Have I ever mentioned that I love the fact my camera can take panoramic pictures?  When the subject material is close it does tend to bend some lines, but the breadth of the picture is still impressive.  The platform doesn't look so large with all of our tents on it.  Unless you were going to fit more than two people in a tent you really don't want more than 12-15 people on a trip.

Someday I'd like to take a longer 5-day trip in the swamp.  Unfortunately in March and April only the three day trips are allowed because there is such high demand during those months.  The weather is nice and the biting flies aren't swarming yet.

In different places the water makes such a great reflecting surface.  I think that is a bit of the color from the sunrise that you can see as well.

Buddy and Kay had everything in dry bags (even Buddy's baby guitar).  You could easily identify them by the small dinosaur that Buddy drew on each one of them.

I had my normal breakfast of juice and cereal bars, but Deb cooked and offered me some food.  I wasn't about to say no to more food!

I declined to share in any of the Spam breakfast however...

All too soon it was time to start packing up.

Yeah, this shot was staged.  I don't remember the exact circumstances, but I think I got a shot just as Deb decided to react--so I took one more with Doug peering into the cup with astonishment on his face.

It always took a few minutes to load things back into the boats.  We all knew that this would be the last time we loaded the boats--all that was left at the end of the day was unloading them once we reached Stephen Foster State Park.

There weren't always enough "official" places to tie the boats up, but we doubled up with some boats and found other places to fasten them.

I think Buddy and Kay had either loaded their stuff by this point, or they were waiting.  Once we got in the water they took out ahead like the previous day.  It was certainly much easier paddling than day one.

Here is most of my stuff.  I think my water containers didn't make it into this shot for some reason.

And here is our canoe with everything packed in.  By this point I'd rearranged things slightly and everything had its place.  More than almost anything else I really appreciated the seat that Larry let me borrow--it made for a much more comfortable day than sitting down with nothing to rest my back against.

Doesn't Josh look great in a skirt?  He said something about keeping water out of the boat, ;-).

As always we had to get a group shot before taking off.  I'm really glad that Perry did this--it is a great way to see everyone each day of the trip.

Before we took off I snapped a panoramic of the scenery that surrounded the platform.  I believe I took this looking out the back into the swampy woods.  It was a beautiful spot.

Some of us had to step down a bit further to get into the canoes.  I think Rob and I had our canoe down by the steps, so it was a shorter step.

The platform looks a bit empty from this angle, but the angle also makes it look bigger in some ways.

For a couple minutes we sorted out which way we were heading--the way back to the main path was a bit narrow.

And then we were off!

I know this post didn't get very far into Day Three, but I didn't want to skip any good pictures.  Expect the subsequent posts from this day to come a bit faster than the previous ones.

~Matt