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| The Brown boys chillin' in the swamp |
On Thursday, March 9, Cooper, Malcolm, and I left Atlanta in the early afternoon to make the roughly five hour drive down to Okefenokee swamp. On the way out of town we picked up my brother Preston and his son Phillip from the airport. This swamp is a national wildlife refuge near the Georgia/Florida border with a whole network of canals and waterways marked out for canoeing. I had been wanting to visit this park for over a year and was super excited about the trip. It is a treasure trove of wildlife, overflowing with alligators and birds.
The first night we spend in a Best Western in Waycross, GA, where we met up with Jeb, John, and their sons Simon and Nick. The closest real hotel to the swamp I could find, it was still a good half hour drive to the park entrance the next morning.
We showed up at the Okefenokee Adventures facility around 9 AM. This outfit is the group I had decided to hire to provide us with a guide for our adventure. I had been a bit tentative about planning the trip entirely without help, because I don't have much experience with paddling, and Okefenokee really is in the middle of nowhere. Also, the guide outfit was going to provide all of the food, drink, tents, canoes and paddles, etc. which seemed awfully convenient. The water level in the swamp has been particularly low this winter because of the drought we've been experiencing in Georgia, so there has been less opportunity to book overnight campsites. Okefenokee Adventures managed to choose a paddling route that they thought would be OK for younger boys, and they even booked the campsites for me with the park service. If I went back to the swamp again, I might plan the trip entirely by myself. But then again, maybe I wouldn't - it was awfully nice to have someone along to cook all the meals for us!
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| Nick "tempting" fate in the Okefenokee parking lot |
We met our guide, filled the canoes with our gear, and set off on the adventure. This first day took us from the parking lot to Monkey Lake. We started by paddling 2 miles along the historic Suwannee Canal, which was dug in the late 1800's in a failed attempt to drain the swamp.
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| The official National Wilderness Area entrance on Suwanee Canal |
We then turned off into Chesser Prairie and paddled the remaining 5.5 miles across wet prairies dotted with cypress, bay, and shrub islands. The order of our little band of paddlers was established early on, with Preston, Phillip, Jeb, and Simon pushing ahead hard while John, Nick, Cooper, Malcolm, and I hung a bit farther back, sticking to a more relaxed pace. I think the competitive spirit between Simon and Phillip (or was it Jeb and Preston?) was super alive!
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| Cooper and Kenton getting ready to head into Chesser Prairie |
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| Cooper captured this image of a spider on his paddle |
From the beginning, I was stunned at how many alligators we saw. I remember Phillip telling me that by the end of the trip he had seen over 70, and Malcolm counted around 40.
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| This bird on the bank was extremely well camouflaged |
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| One of the many alligators we encountered |
The second day started off on a sad note, as Cooper woke up early complaining that he wasn't feeling well. I have to congratulate him for his self control, as he managed to get himself out of the tent and over to the side of the platform before vomiting up all of the previous night's dinner. Was he food poisoned? An hour later, Malcolm expressed his own desire to use the bathroom. But too soon after entering the porta-John he emerged, and he too began throwing up. I wondered if he had just been sickened by the smell of this hole in the ground, but as he and his brother continued to throw up during the next hour, I realized that they were ill. As nobody else became sick that morning, I'm pretty convinced it wasn't food poisoning. My two boys lay there on the floor of the platform in their sleeping bags, miserable, sick, but stalwart as the rest of us played cards, and I tried to decide what we should do. It would still be a good day full of paddling on my own to get them back to the parking lot and into our car. And I would hate to cut the trip short. But if their health didn't improve soon I would have no choice. Luckily they stopped throwing up after a little while, so we packed them into my canoe, tried to force some fluids into them, and decided to take our chances with starting off on day two. The highlight on our way out was seeing an owl (after hearing him for several minutes first).
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| A waterflower (on a lily pad?) |
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| Cooper celebrates with Nick after recovering from his sickness on day two |
On this second day we voyaged from Monkey Lake to Coffee Bay Shelter, a full 9 mile journey. We paddled back across Grand and Chesser Prairies, turning onto the Tater Rake Run to reach Suwannee Canal again. This first section was hard paddling, on both the first and second days, because the water level was low enough that the bottoms of our canoes were often scraping against plants growing up from the bottom. Once we reached the canal, we paddled about 3.5 miles to our shelter.
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| The whole crew on the last stretch of day 2 |
This was significantly easier, as the canal is deeper and clear of the weeds we had encountered earlier in Chesser Prairie. The shelter was a small platform that was nevertheless large enough for us to fit our four tents underneath. We were a bit concerned about overnight rain, so we wanted to try to keep the tents fully covered if possible. Well, it didn't rain that evening, but it did turn out to be Phillip's turn to lose his dinner. Now I was more convinced than ever that the kids were suffering from a virus, not from food poisoning.
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| A view of the swamp from the second night's campsite |
We rose early on the third day for our trip back to the parking lot. It hadn't started raining, but the forecast still called for some morning showers. We put on our raincoats, made sure our rain pants were easily accessible, and set off. This trip was a shorter 5.5 mile paddle, back down Suwannee Canal, bypassing a section of the previous day’s paddle to follow a particularly pretty side run known as the Cutoff. It began to drizzle right as we were leaving, but we didn't think much of that at first. All of us were energetic and paddling hard this morning. Even John's and my canoes managed to keep up with Jeb's and Preston's for the first few miles. Malcolm was the cheerleader in our canoe, exhorting Cooper and me to paddle faster from his comfy and relaxed position in the middle of the canoe. After an hour or so it started to rain again, lightning started to flash, and the thunder rolled in. We began to paddle even faster, leaving our guide completely in the dust. It was the complete opposite of our leisurely trip up the canal the previous day, but we were really concerned about the thunderstorms, and justifiably so. The rain began to pour down harder, then even harder. The thunder rumbled overhead. And just when we thought it couldn't get any crazier, it began to hail! Small chunks of hail, about half a centimeter across, began to rain down upon us. It didn't last long, but by the end of the storm we were completely soaked. Malcolm was still wearing shorts, and he began to shiver. I paddled faster, as fast as I could, and we were soon back at the parking lot. Malcolm's teeth were chattering, and I urged him to change into dry clothes before his hypothermia became even worse. We finished up with lunch at the guide shop, then made the drive back to Atlanta in the afternoon.
Preston and Phillip arrived at the airport just in time to fly standby on an earlier flight than they had originally been booked onto. Lucky for them, but not so lucky for the person in the seat next to them, who got to enjoy the smell of two unwashed paddlers!
