Traveling West

 

Note: images are from Stephen C. Foster website and are not my own. 

We’re heading west and we’re excited, but first we detoured to southern Georgia to Stephen C. Foster State Park in the middle of the Okefenokee swamp. It’s a unique park, very remote and designated a dark sky park. The park comes alive in the evening with the sounds of frogs, crickets, and gators. The sky at night is breath-taking. There is no light pollution here, just a beautiful blanket of sky full of twinkling stars.

The swamp has a beauty all it’s own, the tannic, black water with its acrid fragrance. Moss-laden majestic live oaks dip the tips of their sweeping branches into the water’s edge. The spiders and water striders that break the glassy surface with slow ripples. The silent majesty of the ancient gator that glides gracefully through the cypress knees. Many creatures live here. If you’re lucky, you can see adorable raccoons playing in the shallows, an ibis or heron fishing among the cypress trees, a wood stork landing on a dead branch in the early evening with his beautiful black-tipped wings. A flash of red seen flitting through the trees is probably a red-cockaded woodpecker. In the early morning, turtles congregate on fallen logs, waiting for the sun to warm them. The animals that are more shy and not as easily observed are black bears and white-tail deer.

I hope you choose to visit this unique area. You won’t regret it, but you might want to come in the winter months to avoid some of the heat, mosquitos and other less pleasant swamp critters!