Okefenokee Swamp

I’ve been meaning for us to visit this swamp / park but it was never easy to fit in our travels. It is out of the way. The nearest grocery store is 1.5 hours away. But after doing some research on astronomy, I realized it was the nearest Dark Sky park. These are parks that work to keep the skies dark for stargazing. So we added the park to our itinerary.

Every afternoon it rains and the clouds last into the evening. So, it wasn’t until 2 am or so when the sky was clear. There are some other obstacles. The campgrounds are in a section of tall pines. That is beautiful in the day but not good for stargazing. I ended up biking to a large parking lot. The first night there were a few lights on at the office but after I mentioned this to a ranger, they were mostly off the second night. At different times I saw: Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, the Andromeda galaxy, multiple constellations, several meteors, and the Milky Way. The Milky Way used to be easy to see outside of towns but now it is only seen by eye in a few places like this. 

There were reports of a bear near our campsite, but we never saw it except a picture of it on another campers phone. I did see an alligator in the canal. BTW, stargazing in the dark when you know bear and alligators could be close makes it more exciting every time you hear a noise. During the day, there were quite a few deer in the area including this family. As I was hiking, I scared one deer when I stepped out from a trail. The deer jumped in the air, snorted, ran into the bushes, and then continued to snort at me. I guess we all get scared at times.

Of course I did a morning walk. The interesting part of the boardwalk hike is the spiders. A ranger mentioned there is more this year than normal. They were EVERYWHERE and BIG. Not Harry Potter big, but big enough.