Sunday, March 19, 2017

Day 34 – 7 a.m., 58 degrees.  Packed up and dumped tanks, departed Crooked River at 10 a.m.  Sunny, beautiful day.  We’ll be out in the boonies at this next campground, don’t know if we’ll have cell phone & internet connections there.  We hopped on I-95 South for a short distance into Florida and then headed West on small roads, going back to GA, back to FL, and back to GA again.  Interesting drive through small towns and old neighborhoods.  There’s only one road to get to Stephen C. Foster State Park and it is the only entrance located completely inside of the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge.  That road goes 17 miles into the Okefenokee Swamp and ends at the State Park.  There are no cities close by.

Stephen C. Foster State Park, Fargo, GA

Arrived at the State Park campground at 12:15 p.m.  The campground was almost full; we got site #55.  There’s  not that many campsites and they pack them in here, but our site wasn’t bad.  Got settled in, put up the screened tent, had lunch (not Fireman Subs, oops, it’s Firehouse Subs, and they were good, but still not Jersey Mike’s).  The girls complained a lot on the ride here but were just fine once we arrived.  No internet, no cell phone coverage.  Bugs arrived in the afternoon, so we spent most of our time in the screened tent.  High today 70 degrees.

Site 55, Stephen C. Foster State Park, Fargo, GA

Because there are no cities around, it’s pitch black at night.  You can hear all the noises of the swamplands – various owls, frogs, crickets, and who knows what else.  The night-time sky is amazing, more stars than we realized existed.  It’s wild and rugged here and we like it.
ABOUT THE OKEFENOKEE SWAMP (text is part of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service flyer, Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, May 2016):  “The Okefenokee Swamp is a mystical & primeval place. Its ‘wildness’ is preserved by the National Wilderness Act. Nearly 354,000 acres of the refuge are designated as a National Wilderness Area. It provides outstanding opportunities for solitude & undisturbed recreation. Okefenokee is one of these rare & wild places where one can retreat from civilization and reconnect with the Earth. Okefenokee is a vast bog inside a huge saucer-shaped depression that once was part of the ocean floor. The swamp, which extends 38 miles north to south & 25 miles east to west, remains one of the most well preserved and intact freshwater ecosystems in the world. The refuge carries the designation of a Wetland of International Importance, and refuge staff work to preserve the natural qualities of the swamp. Covering 630 square miles in southeast Georgia, the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge encompasses nearly all of the world renowned Okefenokee Swamp. Alligators bask in the sun while flocks of white ibis, wood storks, and sandhill cranes forage in the shallow tea-colored water. The ‘Land of the Trembling Earth’, as the Native Americans called it, is an ever-changing landscape.”