Part Three, Day Three is not the end

There will be at least two more posts of swamp pictures.  Hopefully y'all aren't tired of Okefenokee yet.  I'm still enjoying writing about the trip.  Please comment and let me know if you've enjoyed looking at these posts.

Again, this is what I think of as classic cypress swamp.  I enjoyed looking back into the forest, realizing that the water continued along with the trees--despite the fact that it almost looked like we were on the lake in the midst of a mountain forest.

It was scenes like this that really made me think we were in the forest.  I'd hear bird calls and the wind whistling through the trees just like I've heard it so many times in Colorado.  I miss the west...

So many still surfaces made for great reflective pictures.

I tried to capture several pictures of canoes passing through trees.  I think a couple of the other photographers got a picture of our canoe doing the same.  I need to take a look through the nine plus gigs of pictures (which I burned to 3 DVDs) that represent our combined photographic efforts.

This sign actually turned out crystal clear.  I'm pretty sure this referenced the shelter where the Boy Scouts decided to eat lunch.

I wonder what caused this tree to grow into such an unusual shape.  It certainly wasn't snow or ice.

This was an important gator.  I saw him and called out a warning to the canoes behind ours--not to watch out, but to slow down so they could get pictures.  We then steered our canoe back the way we'd come so that I could get more pictures.  I then discovered that there was another gator behind this one.

This is my favourite gator picture from the swamp.  I've been using it as the desktop background on my computer ever since I got back from the trip.  For a time it was even the lock screen image on my iPhone, but I change that frequently.

This is the gator from the last shot.  He actually ducked down into the water a little further than you can see above, but here you can see how part of his tail is still above the water's surface.

Deb and Marty took both pictures and video of the gators.  I haven't looked through their pictures, but I'm sure they had a good angle on the gator on the log.  All I could see of him was his backside.

Denise certainly didn't want to be left out--but she was just a bit further away and her camera only has a 10x zoom (mine has 12x).  She did get several great flower pictures that I either couldn't master or was too impatient to get.

This mile marker was the end of the road...er...river.  I didn't take many pictures during the stretch between the last gator and this sign.  We exited out of the narrower part of the swamp (though the lakes were much wider than some passages had been the previous day) onto Billy's Lake.  Some darkish clouds were overhead.  I really thought I felt drops a couple times, so I thought it might rain.  My first reaction was that I didn't want to be rained on, then I realized that as long as my camera was safe it might actually be fun.  We'd prepared for rain, but it hadn't actually happened--so why not?  ;-)  However, the clouds simply blew over and the day stayed hot and warm.  It didn't start raining until I started driving home.

Perry and Stephanie had waited on the water for us to catch up.  After the rush of the day before we decided that there was no point rushing this past day (as I think I mentioned previously), so we were fine with being the last canoes to arrive, especially as we were still earlier than our planned exit time.

Stephanie grabbed this shot of all of us around the last mile marker.  There was a sense of accomplishment, realizing that we'd paddled 31 miles in three days.

Billy's Lake had many other boats on it, including boats with tour guides, double-decker craft, and awninged (I can't believe spell check allowed that word) craft like this one.

This turn-off marked the last leg of the road into Stephen Foster State Park.  Plenty of the park is swamp land and even has some canoe trails, but there was also a road that came all the way to the Okefenokee refuge border.

In case you were wondering where to get just about everywhere in the swamp you could follow this sign board.  I bet plenty of people still get lost, however.

Dry land and vehicles seemed a somewhat strange sight.

Our canoe had actually created a wake a couple times.  Once just for the heck of it we raced across a lake, paddling as fast as we could (and this isn't as easy in a fully laden canoe as it is with one empty of all but two bodies--the live bodies of the paddlers that is).

I assume these canoes belonged to a rental company.

This was the van that had come to pick us up.  He'd arrived early and told us later that he always arrives early as many people end up finishing before they think they will.

This was the last picture that I took from the canoe... :(

We had so much equipment that it wouldn't all fit into the van.  We had to repack the bottom canoes with equipment from everybody else's boats.

After packing everything up we headed into the small store and nature center.  I'll post pictures from those locations next, then iPhone pictures (my camera's memory card was full) from the visitor's center in my last two swamp posts.  I might try to scrounge videos for a video post but I'm not sure if that will happen soon or not.

~Matt

Part the Second, Day the Third

I hadn't looked at my swamp pictures much before this blogging project.  Unfortunately I just realized that many of my pictures from the third day didn't turn out as well as I thought.

I tried to take pictures of all the mile markers on this day--but some of them didn't turn out.  I think Denise grabbed several pictures that I missed.

The lighting made picture taking just a bit on this day for someone using automatic settings (which I do).  I really don't have an excuse for not exploring the manual settings on my camera except that I've never bothered.

Deb grabbed some really good flower shots.

This was the day of the cypress trees, even more than the day before.  I tried to capture pictures of unusual ones.

I think this red stuff was called bubble gum moss.  Whatever it was it was definitely natural, despite looking like remnants of a paint ball fight or spray paint.

I think this was the spot that Deb asked me to make sure to grab a picture of them floating between the trees. This was the best of them I think--horizontal rather than a couple portrait oriented ones.

Some of the gators we saw were barely visible like this one.  Look for the eyes in the center of the picture.

The book about the history of the swamp that I've been reading mentions seeing many nests in swamp trees.  I'm not sure what type of bird built this nest.

This area felt like a cathedral with very tall trees and sun shining in between the trunks.

The miles kept getting closer to the end...

You couldn't miss all of the home signs as you traveled south.

Many of the lakes were nearly covered by lily pads with only a small clear channel in the center.  A couple times we moved the canoe into the pads as a motor boat zoomed by.

I think these guys were fishing--several of the motor boats that we saw were fishermen.  Most of the others were simply sightseeing I think.

I'm pretty sure that the Minnards got much closer to this egret.

Thankfully we didn't get very close to this ribbon snake.

We'd planned to stop at this platform for lunch, but a group of boy scouts had the same idea.  Instead we just used the outhouse and pushed off downstream.

We tied up next to some bushes for lunch.  Unfortunately Denise's canoe drifted into the bushes several times.

I like the contrast of the different colors in this shot--though I should probably try to adjust things as I think the sun slightly washed things out.

I think that there will be at least two more swamp posts.  There was a small museum we visited for a few minutes and I want to cover that in a separate post after I cover the last of our time on the water.

~Matt

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