Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend.
My son Jack and I and his Boy Scout troop went to the Okeefenokee National Wildlife Refuge in Georgia this weekend. We camped a couple miles away from the actual Refuge property, which is half the size of the state of Rhode Island. The nights were cold, somewhere below 45 F (we were in tents), but over all we had a great trip.
We arrived Firday night and set up camp in the dark. Got the kids up with reveille Saturday morning (good to have a retired USAF bugler as one of the dads) and went out to the Refuge. After a presentation by one of the rangers and a movie about the park, we hit the canoes. We rowed out into the swamp and had lunch on a camping platform a few miles away (no dry land to be seen in any direction) and then canoe'd back. Some of it was very tight with not much more a few inches on either side of the canoe to get through. Although this was Jack's first time in a canoe (and my second!) he did great. Jack saw an alligator off in the brush a ways off the canoe trail, but I couldn't see him, they are really hard to see in the water. Later we passed by an alligator sunning himself, about 10 or 12 feet from us, on the side of the canoe trail, as we passed in the canoe. I didn't try to take a picture of that one!
All the Scouts and adults made it back safe and sound, eventually, and no one capsized all day.
Sunday after a chapel service at aour camp we packed up and then went back to the Refuge and went out to the Chesser House, which is an old swamper's cabin built in the 1920's and lived in until 1958. No electricity or running water, and with a kerosene-powered refridgerator. We also went out on a boardwalk built over the swamp and saw another gator, he's the one in the photo below.
We didn't get back to Gainesville until about 4 pm on Sunday. I'm sore and a little sunburned, but it was a memorable trip. Pix below!
Jack & BK
Bugler
Ranger
Jack in canoe
Lunch
Lost?
Will post a few more pics later.