Georgia - Day 5 - Okefenokee Swamp

Stephen C. Foster State Park, Fargo 

Monday, 6 March 2023

I'm certain I took notes today, both from the drive here and from inside the park as well.  Unfortunately, I can't find them anywhere, and I'll have to write this strictly from memory and from the photos I took.  Very frustrating.

Google told me today's drive should take about 2 hours which, of course, meant I should plan on at least 3 hours.  But I knew I wouldn't be able to stay late tomorrow because of a much longer drive, so if I was going to learn about the famed Okefenokee Swamp, I wanted to get there early enough to allow some looking around time.  These days, sunrise isn't until 7:00 and sunset is about 6:30, so those were my parameters.

today's route: 
the lower blue line

Google wanted to send me south to Valdosta and then east to the park, but I needed to go that way tomorrow and, besides, I wanted to see what the town called Homerville looked like.  (I just liked the name.)

I stopped for gas at a Love's Truck Stop near yesterday's campground because it had the cheapest gas in town.  (I know I wrote down notes from today because I remember writing this price down.)

We went through Nashville (GA), "City of Dogwoods," and I'm sorry I was a few weeks too early to see them flowering.  Nashville is the county seat.

Berrien County Courthouse
built 1898

The rest of the town doesn't look as old as the courthouse, but it's still an old town.  A historical marker on the courthouse grounds says the county was named for John MacPherson Berrien, "the American Cicero."  Nashville was named for Gen. Francis Nash from North Carolina, who fought in the Revolutionary War.  (I'm just reporting.)

We drove on to Homerville, which seems like a nice little town, lots of trees.  I stopped at a liquor store there (in Georgia, beer and wine are sold anywhere but scotch is only in package stores).  We had to park at the very end of the parking lot because of a beer delivery truck taking up half the lot, so I decided to stay there for a bit and walked Dext around the residential neighborhood for a couple of blocks.

From there we went south through Fargo and, just before the Suwannee River, we turned off to see a monument to Stephen Foster.

"Erected in Memory of Steven Collins Foster
At the Source of the Stream Which he made Immortal in Song:
"Suwanee River."

The Suwanee River begins in the Okefenokee Swamp, which you can see on the map above is directly east of here, and flows south to Florida (where I saw it last month).  This memorial is in a small rest/picnic area that sits on the river.  Right next to this area, also on the river, is a large, very nice southern-style building that has 2 floors.  Actually, 3 floors but the first is entirely pilings and stairways, so the 2-story building actually begins on the 2nd floor.  It has a large screened-in porch, a small balcony, and a ramp that leads up from the rest area parking lot to the 2nd floor of this building.  It has no labels of any kind.

There were vehicles parked in the parking area directly in front of the building, but they all had boat trailers attached and had clearly made use of the boat ramp nearby.  I was admiring the looks of this building and started talking to a man in a pickup nearby who seemed to be doing the same thing.  When I asked, he said he was sort of local and had lived in the area for decades, but he had no idea what this building was for.  He thought it was a government building, but it was clearly not being used at all so he was stumped.  I guessed it had been intended as a fishing lodge, but he hadn't heard anything that would suggest that.

A shame to see a good-looking well-built place like that, sitting directly on the Suwanee River, just being abandoned.

Just on the other side of the river was the turn to the state park and the only real access I'd been able to find to the Okefenokee Swamp.  And it still took a 17-mile drive to get to the office.  You can sort of see on the map above that the refuge's boundary is a ways from that turn, and along the way is mostly swampland.

The Stephen C. Foster State Park, where I stayed, is a small area inserted into the mammoth Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge.  The state and the federal governments have operated this way by agreement for more than 50 years - the state gets easy access for its citizens to the refuge and the feds get personnel in to manage the area without having to pay for them.

This was my first Georgia state park, and when I checked in I bought a year's entry pass to state parks, and then learned because I was a senior I qualified for a 50% discount on the cost of my stay.  It didn't matter that I wasn't a Georgia resident.  So let's hear it for Georgia State Parks!

Our campsite turned out to be the closest one to the main trails, which started near the office, so after we got situated, Dext and I walked down there.  Next to the office were a boat ramp and canal that led out to the swamp (I guess), equipment rental facilities, and the beginning of a boardwalk nature trail.  Here are signs posted near the office.

detail enlarged below

Knowing that GA-177 is 17 miles from GA-94 to the You Are Here point
indicates the size of this place.

A big fear of mine in all the southern states has been that Dext will discover
an alligator and not see danger.  This sign made me even more nervous.

text enlarged below

left side of sign

right side of sign

part of text enlarged below

So, armed with all this information (and my camera), Dext and I started off on the boardwalk.

Right away we came to a couple of other signs explaining what we'd be looking at.

text and map enlarged below

text enlarged below

There was a wide variety of vegetation along that boardwalk, and a variety of scenes.  Here's a representative sample of what we saw.  Look at all the different life forms.

As a side note, I'm sure Dexter is somewhat lonely without Gracie's companionship, but he's getting to go to lots of places that I wouldn't have wanted to take the two of them.  On this boardwalk, I worried there'd be dogs somewhere along the way and we'd be stuck on the same narrow boardwalk and, with Gracie, wouldn't have been able to control both dogs.  Instead, Dext was very well behaved and we met only one couple (no dogs).

That campground was quite a trick to navigate and I don't know how the larger RVs did it.  It was divided into 2 areas right next to each other, and both had roads that were very narrow and very winding because of being hemmed in by trees, and both driving and walking were made hazardous underfoot by tree roots.  But it was pretty and shady and peaceful.

If I ever find the notes I wrote, I'll add any details I forgot.