Dave'n'Kathy's Vagabond Blog: Okefenokee

Saturday, February 25, 2023

Okefenokee - Suwannee Canal Paddle

Saturday, February 25, 2023

Hi Blog!

Back in 2013, we didn't have kayaks, so when we first visited the Okefenokee Wildlife Refuge, we hired a guide to take us on a boat ride through the swamp. Ten years later, we're back and ready to paddle.

Okefenokee is a vast bog inside a huge saucer-shaped depression that was once part of the ocean floor. The swamp extends 38 miles north to south and 25 miles east to west. There are 8 camping platforms throughout the park allowing multi-day canoe/kayak camping trips.

We started our paddle on the Suwannee Canal. Work on the drainage ditch from the swamp to the St. Marys River began on September 20, 1891. Various crews spent three years digging the Suwannee Canal 11.5 miles into the swamp. Work was slow due to various problems. The sides of the drainage ditch collapsed because of poor engineering design and bad weather. Leased convict labor, large steam shovels, and finally gold miners from north Georgia using large water hoses were unable to dig the ditch deep enough. A steamboat was used to haul rafts of cypress logs along the canal to the sawmill at Camp Cornelia. All of the cypress we see in the refuge are second growth.

Okefenokee Adventures runs tours into the swamp. We may have taken this very same boat 10 years ago.

We noticed that the tour boat stopped for a while and tourists were taking numerous photos. It didn't take long for us to figure out what they were watching.

There are 8 canoe/kayak trails marked by various colors on the Okefenokee Swamp map. The Suwannee Canal is part of the Orange Trail which traverses the park from the National Wildlife Refuge in the east to Stephen C. Foster State Park in the West, for a total of 17 paddle miles. Before we knew it, we had conquered a major part of it: we had reached Mile 1:

Nearly 354,000 acres of the refuge are designated as a National Wilderness Area. The term wilderness is defined as "an area where the earth and community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain" and "an area of undeveloped Federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation, which is protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions"

Spanish moss is an epiphytic flowering plant that often grows upon large trees in tropical and subtropical climates. It commonly is found on the southern live oak and bald cypress in the lowlands, swamps, and marshes of the mid-Atlantic and southeastern states, from the coast of southeastern Virginia to Florida and west to southern Arkansas and Texas. The specific name of the plant, usneoides, means "resembling Usnea," a lichen. While it superficially resembles its namesake, it is neither a lichen such as Usnea nor a moss, and it is not native to Spain.

After two miles, we came to an intersection with the Yellow Trail and Pink Trail.

The day started out cloudy and cool, but as the fog lifted, the sun brightened our way.

We thought about paddling to the Coffee Bay Picnic Shelter for lunch, but we were getting hungry and it was still two miles away. We decided to find a place to raft-up and have lunch. We noticed a breach in the canal wall which led to a wide, shallow lake filled with lily pads.

The Golden Club seems perfectly comfortable sharing the lake with the lilies:

The thick vegetation held our kayaks in place while we munched our lunch.

After enjoying the open view, bright sun and frog croaks, it was time to work our way back to the main channel. We didn't have to break our paddles down, but we did have to duck a few times.

The most entertaining part of our paddle was trying to use the rest area before a bunch of canoes and kayaks caught up with us. By the time we left, there was quite a line.