Day 35 – Rob got up at 7 a.m., I slept in. He took his coffee and the camera and walked over to the Boat Basin and found out the Nature Trail wasn’t open yet. Walked to the end of the road and took pictures of wild turkeys, deer and some egrets. Then when he got back to the Ranger Station, the Nature Trail was open. This is a beautiful boardwalk thru the swamp.
It’s amazing how this campground cleared out since we arrived yesterday. Now it looks bigger and the sites don’t look crowded together. We really like it here; it has a wild & free feel to it.
Stephen C. Foster State Park, Fargo, GA
It was warming up so we went to the Ranger Station to ask them a couple of questions and to book a swamp boat tour for tomorrow morning. Headed out to do the Boardwalk Trail – there are 2 – and did one. Very nice. We’ll do the other Trail before we leave on Friday. We saw (and photographed) the endangered Swallow-Tailed Kite. At the Ranger Station you can rent bikes, canoes and small boats with motors. The staff were teaching a small class on canoeing.
We drove to the “River Sill” which is a place closer to the entrance to the Park about 5 miles from the campground, where someone had tried to damn up the swamp in the 1950’s to control the water levels. The attempt was unsuccessful but this left a paved road that followed along the drainage canal of the Suwanee River (which runs through the Okefenokee Swamp). The Stephen C. Foster State Park is named after the man who wrote the song, “Way Down Upon the Swanee River”. This is a great road for seeing alligators. They were pulled up onto the mud banks sunning themselves. People (locals, it seemed) were fishing off these banks, too, and we talked to one man who said he’d had to move to a new spot because “the gator is lazy and that big one started to come after me wanting to steal the fish I caught”. He showed us his catch of the day, two beautiful fish called “Brim”. Most people we’ve talked to in the south are VERY friendly, talking a lot and having many seemingly tall tales to tell. You can launch a boat from the River Sill, but we aren’t sure whether we want to cruise with the gators. After the swamp boat tour tomorrow maybe we’ll get braver. A bike ride here would be excellent, though.
Came back to our site, had lunch (the second day of Firehouse Subs weren’t that good – hoping to come across Jersey Mike’s again someday), and spent most of the afternoon in the screened tent. High today 77 degrees, sunny and pleasant. End of Week Five.