Wilderness Camping Trip in Okefenokee Wilderness Area - Days Two and Three

After spending the evening listening to alligators bellow, then sleeping before waking in the early hours and admiring the beautiful bright stars above our tents, we woke to another beautiful day.  We enjoyed a leisurely breakfast, then packed and got ready to leave. I set up my camera on a little tripod so we could get this picture.  Took me about six leaps into the canoe.

Leaving to start our second day

 I wanted to see how much further we could get down the orange trail so we started off in the opposite direction we needed to go to get to our next shelter. Along the way we found a moma alligator sunning on a log with several babies sunning behind her. (To make sense of our trails, click on the map showing the various trails and shelters.)

More baby alligators

 After about a mile of paddling, we go to this set of logs and had to turn around.

Current end-of-the-line for Orange Trail

We continued back down the orange trail and stopped back at our camp to take a break.  Then we went on down to the turn for the purple trail. By the time we got to the intersection with the green trail we decided to not explore it but to continue to our next camp site, Roundtop.

With all this power, we paddled nearly four miles an hour

My end of the canoe - both of us switched between single and double blades

Soon after we turned on the purple trail, the swamp turned into mostly a marsh with scattered islands of trees.

View after we turned on Purple Trail

Ibis on Purple Trail

We didn't reach Roundtop until about two in the afternoon. We approached it from the back but this is a better view of it.

Roundtop  - Our quarters for the second night

We again set up our tents, this time keeping them under the roofed part, because we were forecast to have rain during the night. This place has a 360 degree view and we had a relaxing time just watching different parts of it.  We did have an alligator that took umbrage with us being out by the porta potty and hissed at us. Later he had a confrontation with another alligator and made it leave. He attracted our attention to the confrontation by giving a kind of a coughing sound which seemed to intimidate the other alligator who was almost nose to nose with the aggressive alligator when we noticed the confrontation.

Supper that night was black bean quinoa soup with  jalapeno cornbread muffins.  Pat volunteered to heat it all up.  He even figured how to heat everything up with only one stove and pot.

Pat cooking supper 

Black bean quinoa soup with Pat's fresh cilantro and  jalapeno corn muffins

We got an almost sunset just before the sun actually set and just before the clouds obscured everything.

An almost sunset before the clouds closed in

We did fight the mosquitoes after sunset and finally went to bed soon after dark. It was very warm and I found it hard to sleep until after we had had several showers.  Pat felt his tent getting wet so got up and moved it; he also drug mine to a drier place on the platform with me in it.

The next morning, we got two tiny showers while we were packing up.  The rain falling on water among the water lily leaves was so beautiful, I had to take a picture of it.

Morning rain 

We only had a few hours of paddling so we were in no rush to leave.  We finally left about 9:30 A.M. under cloudy skies, but with an occasional glimpse of the sun.

New Pitcher plants among the old 

Sandhill cranes and golden club

In only a few miles, we were at the turn back into Suwannee Canal and headed back to the beginning.

We got home in time to eat a late lunch before repacking for the next two days of paddling and camping on the St. Mary's River.  It was a wonderful, warm trip with rain just how I like it best - at night and falling on a tin roof.

Postscript:  Pat sent me a picture of our route.

Five Fast Days in the Boundary Waters

 Dateline: September 15, Ely, MN 

Neither fires, nor rain nor wind stopped us from having fun in our six days in the Boundary Waters, but we did have to change our plans a few times. 

Rain was the least of our problems since the only two times it rained was at night.  But we did have to set up two camp sites in anticipation of rain and put up a fly. 

Fire stopped us from going through a series of small lakes which we planned to do on our way back. And when the rangers came around to tell everyone that they were closing the east end of  Knife Lake, due the the Canadian fire, they didn’t see us, so didn’t stop to tell us that they were closing our area and that the other area was now open. We learned about it at the first portage back, after paddling west on Knife Lake.

We could see the smoke from the Canadian fire from our second camp which was almost across from part of the fire. 

Ben hauling us through three lakes

Loading up at the first of seven portages

First of two hauls at every portage - second was food barrel and handheld stuff

The reason for portages

View at the fifth of the seven portages

 And the wind!  The strong west winds were helpful on our way out the first day but were even stronger the third day.  We decided that we probably should not be paddling, especially since the boat would be so light and the winds, which were producing white caps early in the morning,  had several hours to increase. So we spent our third day bound to one small island.  But I enjoyed bushwhacking over the island and finding little views and also taking a picture of the Canadian fire which seemed to be at it’s worst that day. But the winds favored us on the way back. The first day of our return, we had no to very light winds and the  last day we had mostly side winds or we could paddle in the lee of some land on flat water.

My first tent site

Open for "bidnes" -toilet paper marks the "door" to the bathroom

Room with a view

A well deserved first day sunset

Bob fishing at dawn

We enjoyed ring-billed gulls, eagles, two immature ospreys fishing, sharing our island camp with three chipmunks – who modeled just how fast they could get into our food. I’m going to make up a Power Point show to show to the Houston Area Sea Kayakers.  I was discussing with Bob, what would be good pictures and we thought a picture of our food barrel – which protects it  from bears with some of our food spread out on our “table cloth” would be interesting. On chipmunk showed up as soon as we started arranging the food and went scooting and rooting under a bag of gorp.  Then it took a quick bite out of the bag while Bob was yelling at it and I was yelling to not scare off my model before I got good pictures.  They were obviously used to campers feeding them and would come and sit on our feet even if we weren’t offering them food. One took a Cheerio from my fingers and another ate the last sun-dried tomato from our supper.  And just as we were leaving our camp this morning, a mink swam just in front of us to an arm of our campsite.