Okefenokee Redux

Hi Blog.  It's Kathy.  My turn to blog tonight.  By the way, the tick bite is healing nicely.  No sign of infection or the dreaded bullseye. If anything changes, you'll be the first to know.

We discovered that Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge is so large you can't see it all in one day.  So, today we decided to take a second look, this time from the North entrance near Waycross, GA.  Back in 1946, the good folks of Waycross wanted to set up a tourist park right on the edge of the preserve.  They formed a non-profit corporation and leased space at the edge of the refuge. There is a gift shop, boat rides, train ride, life animal enclosure, history museums, animal nature center and swamp nature center.

As you enter the welcome center and gift shop, you come face to face with Oscar.  He was the park's oldest and biggest alligator at over 12 feet.  We were told by the naturalist on duty that all of the alligators near this part of the refuge are Oscar's descendants.  No other male alligators would come into Oscar's home turf.  Can't say I blame them.  Take a look at those teeth!

As you make your way around to all the different buildings, you really have to watch where you walk.  They actually made us sign a liability waiver to walk the boardwalk through the swamp because you just never know who you are going to to run into on the trails.

No trip to a tourist attraction would be complete without a train ride! The Lady Suwannee took us for a one hour tour through the swamp, including a stop at Pioneer Island for a look at the recreated homestead.

Here is Dave on the front porch of the cabin.  Made me think of Darla's grandmom who grew up near the Okefenokee Swamp.

After the train ride, we stopped at the nature center.  Unfortunately the 2:00 p.m. nature show doesn't show on Mondays and Tuesdays in the winter.  However, one of the new naturalists asked if she could practice with us, but letting us hold the alligators while she talked about them. We acted real cool and said sure.  We've got time.  What I really wanted to do was shout - COOL - I get to play with baby alligators!  Here I am with a two month old.

Dave is holding a five month old.

This is what happened when Mom found out we were messing with her babies!

Actually, that's Roy.  Another large alligator that passed away from natural causes and was stuffed so that folks could have their pictures taken with an alligator.  We also got to hold a little baby gray rat snake.  She was such a little cutie.

Part of the boardwalk in the park goes by several enclosures so you can see the various animals that live in the swamp.  We passed by a pen of alligators and another with various turtles.  Mr. Otter had his own enclosure complete with swimming hole and otter house.

The other end of the boardwalk takes you 1/4 mile into the swamp along a boardwalk. I tried my best to stay in the middle of the path and ignore all the warning signs.

At the end of the boardwalk is a 90-foot high observation tower.  We didn't count the steps on the way up, but once we stopped climbing we were looking down onto the tops of the trees.

This part of the refuge is very different from the East entrance we visited earlier.  Gone are the wide open prairies, lakes and islands.  All we could see for miles were cypress and pine trees.  You could look down and see the sun reflecting off the inky black water between the trees.

While this park was very touristy, it still gave us the opportunity to see parts of the swamp we wouldn't have been able to see otherwise.