Yesterday afternoon, my mom, aunt and I drove down to Folkston, GA to visit the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. We just missed the 2:30 boat tour, so we spent the first hour exploring the visitors' center and hiking the short trail along the Suwannee Canal. (This canal was dug in the late 1800s when someone had the absurd idea of digging a canal to drain the swamp into the St. Mary's river. After digging something like 12 miles of canal at great expense, they realized that the swamp was - however slowly - flowing in the OTHER directions, towards the Suwannee River. Whoops.) Anyhow, the hiking trail takes you Mizell Prairie, which is quite scenic:
The 3:30 boat tour is the last tour of the day (unless you reserve a special sunset tour). It takes you down the Suwanee Canal and into one of the larger prairies and lasts about 90 minutes. We saw alligators, herons, egrets and sandhill cranes. Below are a few of my photos; the full photoset can be seen here.
This is the dock in front of the visitors' center.
Alligator!
The Okefenokee is very colorful in the fall.
Tree-island reflection
The sandhill cranes weren't very cooperative when it came to posing; this was the best sandhill shot I got. (Gwen - this is what we saw last time we were here!)
Taking the Suwannee Canal back towards the Visitors' Center
After disembarking from the tour, we ate at the small cafe located next to the Okefenokee Adventures gift shop (right next to the dock, you can't miss it). The food was yummy, fresh and cheap. Excellent! We had chosen yesterday to venture down to the swamp as they were having their annual Chesser Island Christmas... which involved the decorating of the Chesser Island Homestead in allegedly period holiday decor, and providing free refreshments and live music. Yes, we went for the free refreshments. I snagged some yummy freshly baked cookies. I wasn't too excited by the music. I was expecting Christmas carols. Now, I'm not particularly into Christmas, but carols are songs everyone knows, and I wouldn't have minded standing around the bonfire, caroling. Instead there was some crazy woman who sang a very animated song about shooting an armadillo. I wish I had remembered that my camera takes audio (minus video); I didn't make a video of it because it was too dark by that point. Also, at first I thought it was going to be a love-the-wild-creatures kind of song, instead of "Blast that aaaaaaaarmadillllllooooooooooo! Put him in the ground!" I would just like to state for the record that I am against the killing of armadillos. Also, if you see one in the road when you're driving, don't try to straddle it to avoid killing it. Its defense mechanism is to jump when it is threatened (its skin/shell is quite tough; it could totally knock a predator out), and it will likely splatter itself all over the undercarriage of your car. So swerve around the little guy. There. I've done my part to counteract the crazy anti-armadillo woman.
Remember to check out my full photoset from the swamp!
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