November 12-23, 2019
by Tracy Hays
A group of Rocky Mountain Canoe Club members and a few guests paddled these two southern delights in late November. The Swamp is in South Georgia, and the Suwanee is in North Florida. Both places deserve a place in every paddlers bucket list. I think everyone had a pretty good time. I had spent a lot of time researching, planning and scouting our routes for these trips but as it turned out we were not able to do any of the planed routes due to low water conditions. With some last-minute scrambling we were able to come up with pretty good substitute trips. Big thanks to Debbie for getting our camping permits for the Okefenokee Swamp on our new route and to Steve, owner of the Suwannee Canoe Outpost for recommending the section of the Suwannee that we ended up paddling.
Part A, Okefenokee, 11 participants
Everyone showed up at Pastime RV Camp and Resort the day before the trip. It is just across the road from the Suwannee Canal Recreation Area where our trip would begin. We all went to the recreation area and did the driving tour and checked out their displays.
Day 1. We were rigged and ready to go by 10 a.m. on a beautiful sunny 65° day and paddled 10 miles down the orange and pink trail to Monkey Lake. Along the way we saw many small alligators and several large ones. The water of the Okefenokee was low making tough paddling conditions through thick vegetation, mostly lily pads. Cool sightings for today were a wood stork and a spoonbill. It rained a little just before we got to camp. Platforms provided for camping in the Okefenokee are billed as accommodating up to 20 people. Our group of 11 proved that it was mathematically possible to set up 8 tents of various sizes on the platforms but it was certainly not a comfortable situation. It was a tight squeeze stepping over around and through everyone’s stuff but we made the most of it, and in hindsight it was actually kind of fun, but once is enough for me.
Day 2. It was a gray and chilly day and we backtracked to the orange trail then took the yellow trail to Cedar Hammock camp. This Camp is a plastic floating dock. It was hard to attach our tents to this doc. The paddle trails in the Okefenokee are color coded on the map and the signs at the intersections are also color coded to match the map. This system makes it very easy to know where you are. We saw few alligators today, but lots of birds.
Day 3. We backtracked once again to the orange trail then West and North to Coffee Bay for lunch. Then on to Roundtop on the purple trail to camp. It began to rain about 6 p.m. and rained and blew hard all night until about 9 a.m. the next day. There was no sunset or sunrise or full moon because of very heavy cloud cover. I learned later that it rained about 3 inches overnight and we spent the next morning bailing out the canoes.
Day 4. It seemed the swamp rose several inches overnight with all the rain and paddling today was much easier. We continued up the purple trail and down the blue trail to the orange trail and our next camp at Canal Run. Another gray day but much warmer. No gators were seen today. We have seen an unbelievable amount of the carnivorous Pitcher Plants the past few days. We dissected one which was full of yuck. There were intact dead bugs near the top which transform to a brown sludge near the bottom of the stem. There was a tiny spider living in its web inside the pitcher at the top. It seemed to be taking advantage the situation, until the day he slips into the trap below. We saw an owl, storks and ibis, an eagle, herons, egrets and others today.
Day 5. Today we paddled back to the Suwanee Recreation area arriving about 2 p.m. After the first day alligators were scarce, I guess they don’t like gray weather. We did see some tiny frogs and a couple big snakes. Despite the gray days and rainy nights, it was a fun trip. We logged about 40 paddle miles. Lynn brought a huge candle in an ammo can that served us well as our campfire on this trip. She called it a mood enhancement device, it did that also.
Part B, Suwanee River 12 participants
We paddled the Suwanee River from White Springs to Branford, about 95 miles.
Day 1. After camping at the Canoe Outpost at Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park we loaded up our boats onto the shuttle and were on the road by 9 am. We went to White Springs and launched our boats about 11am and paddled 3 miles to Stephen Foster Cultural Park. We stopped here and visited the grounds. Then on to Wood River Ferry Camp. The river camps are provided free of charge by the state of Florida. Each River Camp has five screened-in roofed shelters that will accommodate eight people each. There are also places to set up tents. They have hot showers, lights and flushing toilets, fire pits, and sheltered picnic areas. This is borderline glamping.
Day 2. We paddled 19 miles to Horton Creek River Camp. It was a beautiful day but a long paddle and we arrived at about 4:30 pm.
Day 3. Before paddling we took a walk to the “champion” cypress tree, one of the largest Cypress in Florida, very impressive. We were off by 10 a.m. and paddled 14 miles to the Confluence of the Suwannee River and the Withlacoochee River. We found a nice place up on the bluff to set up our camp. This ended up being our only primitive camp site of the trip. The Withlacoochee has a nice flow of crystal clear water in contrast to the tea-colored water of the Suwannee River.
Day 4. A mile or two down we came to shoaling that Steve, our shuttle driver predicted several of us would end up swimming. We fooled him, none of us had any problems. We paddled on to Dowling River Camp. Several of our group witnessed a nearly successful armadillo round up here. That little critter was just too fast. Each night on our trip after setting up camp we would gather around a fire and take turns telling stories of our adventures of the last year. As a group, we have done some awesome things. There was also some music; guitar, song and poetry. If there had been a prize, it surely would have gone to Judy for her fantastic recital of Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky”.
Day 5. We paddled about 19 Mi to Peacock Slough River camp stopping at Lafayette Blue Springs along the way which is a very nice place. This camp had the sweetest host couple, Frank and Ann. They have volunteered here seasonally for 9 years. They had decorated the picnic area with a fall theme and the entire grounds was in perfect order. It was obvious they were proud of “their” camp and were helpful beyond any expectations.
Day 6. We saw the remains of a rotating old railroad bridge in the middle of the Suwannee River. Its purpose was to rotate 90 degrees to allow paddle wheel boats to pass by back in the day. Later we stopped at Convict Springs for burgers and ice cream. No kidding, we paddled right up to the park-like setting around the spring and restaurant. They had a cute baby pig with a harness and leash, just like a puppy. We snorkeled at Royal Springs, a wonderful clear blue hole. We jumped and dove off the 12-15-foot-high platform, lots of fun. Dick surprised us all with a beautiful Swan Dive. I gave it a 9 (sorry Dick, there ain’t no 10’s)… We camped at Adams Tract after paddling 10.5 miles today.
Day 7. It was a short paddle day of 10 miles to Branford. Along the way we stopped to snorkel at Troy Springs, a beautiful big blue hole with crystal clear water. There were 20 or 30 turtles swimming around and several varieties of fish. Next stop was Little River Springs. Here we saw 4 scuba divers emerge from the cave. They told us it went down 90 feet and 1400 horizontal feet. Several of us snorkeled here, but we stayed out of the cave. We had perfect weather every day on the Suwanee. This more than made up for the challenging conditions in the Okefenokee. The Suwanee offered up a number of shoals, creating quick bouncy water that required some attention to navigate adding to our fun. Each bend in this river reveals mega doses of natural beauty, be it the live oaks draped in Spanish moss, stately cypress trees, exposed jagged limestone riverbanks or the amazingly complicated exposed root systems on the riverbank. We saw a flock of probably 100 vultures, some soaring, some roosting in the treetops, wow. We saw only one gator on the Suwanee. It was a big one near the end of our trip, stained all yellow from whatever it had wallowed in, sunning itself on the bank. A few miles later our trip ended at Branford and we were shuttled back to the Spirit of Suwanee Music Park. One night near the end of the trip we all took turns revealing our favorite part of the trip. I have been thinking about this and learned there were quite a number of “firsts” for different members of our group. They included first time paddling this area of the country, first sighting of various birds and plants, first time paddling with alligators, first time snorkeling and other things. I think my favorite part of the trip was being a part of, and helping facilitate some of these firsts, and those pitcher plants…
