The Exceptional Okefenokee Swamp - Folkston GA [November 15, 2018]

Kayaking the Okefenokee Swamp

Sometimes, but rarely, we plan an adventure that seems cool and fun in planning and turns out to be a unique and special experience.  Kayaking in the Okefenokee Swamp was one of these unexpected and glorious adventures.  As we walked from the outfitters’ office to the kayaks, a flock of about 40 Sandhill Cranes flew overhead, gobbling their hoarse calls.  A perfect start.

Suwanee Canal

A cold and sleepy gator

South Georgia was experiencing unusually cold and grey weather.  We arrived ready to kayak, bundled up against 55 degree temperatures (that feel even colder on the water) with wool shirts, heavy pants, layers of jackets, and multiple pairs of socks.  Okefenokee Adventures also provided us with fleece bags to stick our legs into as temps dropped at the end of the day.  Many of the cold-blooded creatures in the swamp had burrowed into the mud at the bottom or holed up in leaf litter.  Alligators go in to a kind of torpor when temps drop below 60.  We saw the snouts and eyes of a few who had propped their heads on the shoreline, and only one in motion when the sun poked through the clouds and lit the swamp with brilliant warmth.

Slow moving water gives great reflections

With our guide Jennifer

The Okefenokee Swamp is a shallow peat-filled wetland.  It is called a “blackwater” swamp because the tannin in the decaying leaves stains the water the color of tea.  It is the source of the St. Mary’s River the serves as part of the border between Georgia and Florida before it reaches the Atlantic Ocean, and the Suwanee River that empties into the Gulf of Mexico.

Dense vegetation and black water

Heading to the wet prairie

Tickseed Sunflower "island"

The swamp has sections of trees anchored in dry land, and vast areas of “wet prairie”.  Peat composed of millennia of decaying plant matter layered on the swamp floor traps pockets of methane.  The methane will bubble to the surface, bringing up a section of peat with it.  Seeds from small plants and wildflowers will colonize this floating island.  The islands can be moved by the wind, or your paddle as you happen by.  If you try to step on it, the island will sink.  Hence the translation for Okefenokee as “Land of Trembling Earth.”  Exposed peat will dry in times of drought, turning it into fuel ready for a chance lightening strike on a nearby tree to make it ignite.  Vast acreages of fire are very common in the Okefenokee, and for many plants are an important part of the survival and continuation of the species.

Prairie

A late blooming water lily

This scrawny cypress tree is 20 years old. We know because it has cones on it.

We started our paddle down the Suwanee Canal, an incongruous but lovely canal cut through the swamp in a failed attempt in the early 1900’s to drain the swamp.  It is lined with cypress trees.  In areas that had not been affected by recent fire, the trees were draped with Spanish Moss.  In other places, the trees were bare.  The Cypress tree drops its needles each Fall, and we were able to witness Autumn in the swamp, as the trees turned to a golden brown.

This tiny, colorful Sundew traps insects in the tiny hairs and eats them

Pitcher plants are also carnivorous, they can grow very tall in the Oke

A brief moment of sun illuminates Cypress in Fall colors

We left the canal to paddle through prairies loaded with lily pads and floating islands of tickseed sunflowers, sundew carniverous plants, redroot, and pitcher (also carniverous) plants.  At this point the water trail was narrow and we paddled in single file past one extraordinary vista after another.

Sunset in the Swamp

Heading home

The setting sun lights the way

You don’t have to kayak to enjoy the Swamp, Okefenokee Adventures will also give you a shorter motorboat tour.  We arranged for a guided “Sunset” tour that started at 2 and ended at 6.  An evening out on the water would give us the chance to see the birds as they flew to their evening roosts.  Before evening fell, we heard Owls calling in the distance, and Sand Cranes gobbling as they flew low over the prairie.  We saw White Ibis feeding, and startled Great Egrets out of the brush in dignified flights of white.  With the onset of darkness, three Anhinga’s playfully escorted us down the canal toward home, and then abandoned us to fly to roost.  Huge flocks of Ibis flapped overhead. 
 

Night falls on the Swamp

Looking back as the sun sets

We arrived back to the dock well after dark, paddling the last half hour in the total quiet of a sleeping swamp, guided by a weak light from the half moon.  This was not the sinister, buzzing swamp that you might imagine as full of toothy or venomous inhabitants.  This was a lovely, quiet, serene place, with beauty to be found in broad vistas and tiny plants and animals.  It is unique and special.  The world is a better place for it, and we are so happy that it is protected as a National Wildlife Refuge, and has been since 1937.

Paddling home by the light of the moon

 Here are pictures that our guide, Jenn, took.

Hiking a Former Carnegie Island Paradise – Cumberland Island National Seashore GA [November 14, 2018]

The ruins of Dungeness, as seen from the driveway

In the 1880’s, Thomas Carnegie (brother and business partner of Andrew Carnegie) and his wife Lucy purchased Cumberland Island, off the coast of Georgia, to make a summer home.  Shortly after they completed building a house there, Thomas died (at age 43) and Lucy remained on the island and raised their 10 children there.  She expanded their newly built mansion, Dungeness, to be 37,000 sq feet and 50 rooms huge.  The island became self-sufficient with vegetable gardens, greenhouses and a power plant, and was maintained by an enormous staff of hundreds of workers.  When the children grew up and married, she built other mansions around the island for them.  As time progressed, Dungeness was abandoned and eventually burned.  The island and the other homes, some intact and some in ruins, were given to the National Park Service to protect its ecosystems, wildlife and unique history.  Cumberland Island has the most loggerhead turtle nests in the nation.  There is so much to do there, hiking, camping, beaching, bird watching, and history tours.

You arrive on Cumberland Island by passenger ferry.  The vehicles on the island belong to the National Park Service, to a licensed tour group who will drive you around the island, to research groups studying turtles, or to the few individuals who maintain a couple of private homes on the island.  If you believe Wikipedia, these individuals are Carnegies.  All other transportation is by foot or fat wheeled bicycles that you can rent on the island.  The ferry ride is about 45 minutes long and winds through the salt marsh between the mainland and the island.  You have a little over 6 hours on the island before taking the ferry home late in the afternoon.  Our ferry had a large group of girls on a college sponsored camping trip.  We saw several camping families (with their wagons full of gear) get back on the ferry for its return trip.

Arriving by ferry

Dense Maritime Forest - live oaks, spanish moss and palmetto

We chose to hike the 4.3 mile “Southern Loop Walk” (though we ended up walking much further) that takes you through the three major ecosystems (Maritime Forest, Salt Marsh and Beach) and past several historic buildings including the impressive Dungeness ruins.  The Maritime Forest consists of stands of huge, twisted live oak trees draped with spanish moss, a few cedar and pine trees, and dense sawtooth palm and palmetto undergrowth.  The expansive Salt Marshes run between the island and the mainland, and occasionally extend into the island’s interior with low lying, bay-like areas of water and saw-tooth grass.  The beach is long, wide and impressive.   

Beautiful dunes

Ferocious waves

By the time we reached the beach in our loop walk, the predicted gale strength winds had arrived, blasting sand in our faces (dermabrasion anyone?).  After spending a few minutes being whipped by the wind and appreciating the ferocity of the waves, we retreated inland and continued the “loop” along the hard-packed sand of the Main Road that runs through the Maritime Forest along the center of the island.

The "Tabby House" that remains from the time of the Greenes

Tabby construction material revealed in a ruined wall

We visited a restored Ice House, where the Carnegie’s had ice delivered by boat after having been cut from northern lakes.  Inside the thick-walled building are exhibits about the inhabitants of the island.  The earliest inhabitants were Timucuan Indians.  Middens provide some material remnants of their life on the island.  Spanish explorers established missions and left behind written accounts of their stay, though no physical traces remain.  The British fortified the island in the 1700’s, again we have accounts, but no other evidence of their stay.  After the Revolutionary War, war hero Nathaniel Greene acquired part the island.  He and other settlers, stripped the valuable live oak trees off the land, selling them for shipbuilding.  His widow built the first house (called Dungeness) on the site, and the family turned the cleared land to agriculture, particularly Sea Island Cotton.  A house built with walls of oyster shells, sand and lime (a construction material called tabby) remains from this time period.

Dungeness greenhouses

After the Civil War, a group of freed slaves established a community on the northern end of the island.  The only surviving structure from that community is a Baptist church.  Descendants of these freedmen became some of the many workers hired by Lucy Carnegie to run the estate.  Lucy Carnegie allowed the Maritime Forest to regrow along the island, making it a natural escape for her family and their friends from city life.

Dungeness from across part of the gardens

Lucy Carnegie built her house, also called Dungeness, on the site of the ruins of the Greene’s Dungeness.  Striking ruins remain of the house, and of many of the out buildings that supported this self-sufficient community.  The lawns between the house and the Salt Marsh were terraced and used for both ornamental and vegetable gardens.  The ruins of a Recreation House remain that housed a heated swimming pool, squash court and gym.  A greenhouse and other out buildings survive in various forms of decay.  Intact buildings are used by the NPS today.  Several of the mansions built for Lucy’s children remain, with one, Plum Orchard, open to the public.  Plum Orchard is on the northern end of the island, and can visited as part of the van tour.

The locals call these horses "Marsh Ponies"

Feral farm animals, cows, horses and hogs from the days of agricultural use of the island joined the native animals in this unique island ecology.  We had been told that we “might” see “some” horses.  They were everywhere!  And although still wild animals, they are used to being around humans (many people visit here each year), and the horses were content to munch on the grass near us as we took pictures and admired other scenery.  We saw places where feral hogs have rooted up land areas on the side of the road.  The feral cattle have been removed from the island.

And then there were turkeys ...

... and armadillos ...

... and vultures!

The “native” animals were equally comfortable showing themselves to us.  We saw many groups of turkeys.  At one point, they were running after us down the road – the very definition of a Turkey Trot (sorry, a little Thanksgiving humor).  We passed several armadillos, one industriously plowing a furrow of ground just a few feet from us as it dug up insects for lunch.  A surprised deer burst out of the palmetto bushes in front of us when we took a side trip to see the campgrounds.  Several vultures tried to keep their balance on dead tree limbs in the heavy winds, and glared at us as we crossed the dunes to the beach.  This really is a unique and lively place.

Along the forest trail

Cumberland Island is an interesting mixture of history and nature.  In more clement weather, the beach would have been a huge draw for us.  Had we the time, fat-wheeled bicycles, (and stronger legs) there is so much more we could have explored.  This is truly an interesting treat of a National Park.

Interesting textures

Fallen Live Oak tree bark with more interesting texture

Wind blown dunes

Crazy live oak tree