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Okefenokee Swamp and on to AlabamaDec 4, 2007
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USFWS Does a good job with public accomodations at the Okefenokee Refuge
( miles of swamps and islands, but not much wildlife on our...
No fooling.
| December 3-4, Okefenokee and on to Alabama. St. Marys GA may have been our greatest distance from home on this trip. I let the batteries die in the GPS and am too lazy to re-calibrate it, so don't have an exact mileage, but we headed back west and a little northward after we left St Marys, so I think we are closer to home. First stop was Okefenokee National Wildlife refuge, which encompasses most of the Okefenokee Swamp. I suspect the only way to really get a feel for the swamp would be a several day canoe trip. We had to make do with a tour of the visitor center, a nine-mile "Swamp Island Drive" and a 1 ½ mile hike on a boardwalk through one corner of the refuge. We saw one alligator, a few buzzards, some anole lizards and a lot of vegetation. Leaving the NWR, we circled south of the swamp through the Osceola National Forest in the Florida Panhandle, then back up through southern Georgia to Ochlocknee where we spent the night. This route took us through mile after mile of pine plantations. It is all very swampy, with water standing in the borrow ditches and every low spot was wet and growing swamp vegetation, in spite of the drought. Lots of log trucks hauling tree-length logs that are 30-40 feet long and only about 6-8 inches at the butt end. Looks like a lot of the wood is chipped for paper or hardboard, but we have seen a few sawmills and a big lumber-treating operation. We crossed the Suwannee River at the point it flows out of Okefenokee Swamp, which is marked by a monument to Stephen Foster and a nice visitor center which was closed on Monday. As we started back north, the land started to rise slowly, the soil changed from sand to reddish clay, and we started to see cotton fields that are being harvested and big pecan groves. We are staying on the black highways, off of the interstates and even the red roads most of the time. Apparently maps are no longer printed with secondary roads in blue, so if William Least Heat Moon was writing his famous travelogue today, it would be "Red, Black and Grey Highways". We have passed through a number of neat little towns, many of which have antebellum mansions, churches and courthouses that are as worthy of visiting as some of the famous sites like Savannah. We are also seeing some strikingly poor communities and some scrubby farms and forest lands. Ate lunch at 'Kuntry Rooster Cafe' in Edison GA. Quite an experience listening to the farmers and businessmen discussing local football, hunting, and who is doing well/poorly on their farms. Food was good, plentiful and mostly fried. The geology has been interesting. Since we left Virginia, we have been on the coastal plains which are very flat, very low-lying, and there are no rocks. Unlike the west coast, where there are rocky headlands and points and boulders out in the ocean, everything on the Atlantic coast is sand, and most of the sand is very fine and very mobile. Most of the beach areas prohibit walking on the dunes, because if the sea-oats and other vegetation is disturbed, the dune will blow away. There is no gravel or rocks, a lot of the driveways are paved with crushed oyster shells or a soft marl type rock that apparently is quarried out of the marshes. As we left the coast, it was still sand for about 100 miles, then clay, but still no rocks. Tonight we are at Opelika, Alabama, which does have some gravel and rock. Looks like quarrying rock to haul south is a major industry. Weather has cooled off for a couple of days. Our next two weeks are in Nashville, Memphis, and Branson, we are hoping that the weather doesn't get too nasty before we head back south toward the Gulf of Mexico. |
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