We popped into the Okefenokee Swamp NWR today for a glimpse of an area we had heard about all our lives. We initially looked for the area in Florida which was unwise because most of the swamp is in Georgia. However, we found it where it has always been and went there and took a boat ride into the swamp which was great.
Quite a bit of the boat ride is in the Suwannee Canal which is a big excavation made last century by land speculators who believed they could drain the swamp and sell the land to idiots for farmland. Fortunately for everyone, their venture went belly-up after four years of digging and losing money and they went away leaving a several miles long canal that is filled with water, abundant vegetation and lots of turtles and gators. Our boat pilot / guide was a guy named Bill who used to be a school teacher so he was able to explain what we were seeing in a way that even ignoramuses like us could understand. I would recommend the boat ride to all especially since it only costs about $20 a head and lasted almost two hours. The swamp is a strange place with truly bizarre lifeforms that seem fascinating to me.
Inside the park is also a loop drive that we took and we spotted several gators and some turtles lounging right next to the road. Some of the other folks on the loop apparently are not too savvy on spotting turtles or alligators because they would drive up behind us and then appear to pass Charlotte but instead would stop their vision-obscuring vans between us and the fauna or flora at which we were gazing. Blind, obnoxious twits that, fortunately, were very happy to continue on their way after blocking our view for a while because they still seemed to be unable to see what was plainly evident to us.
Barbecued steak and Caesar salad for dinner tonight. Boy, this traveling is tough.