Not that we’re a big Valentine’s Day type of family, but in the before time I never would have imagined we would have spent V-day deep in a Georgian swamp, during a halfway decent rainstorm no less. Yet there we were.
Our four day sprint out from California to Florida was a bit aggressive, so we decided to take our time on the return trip. The boys have the week off from school and I took the week off from work so that should help too, Lana does need to put in one full day but that’s still way better than five full days. Needing to worry about connectivity and being stationary for work/school definitely slow us down, so it’s really nice when that’s not a consideration.
To begin our “leisurely” trip back home, Lana found us a highly rated park just across the Florida/Georgia border – the Stephan C. Foster State Park in the heart of the Okefenokee National Nature Preserve. By the time we pulled in, it was a bit after dark and the rain was coming down consistently, not quite pouring, but more than a gentle patter.
Our campsite came with electricity and water, but no sewer. The park did have a dump station, but unfortunately it wasn’t listed on the map so we ended up driving around in a few circles trying to find it. We hadn’t dumped since we left home more than two weeks earlier so we thought it would be a good idea to take care of that before settling in. I so badly wanted to do my Uncle Eddie impression at my parents house but considering that we were already on the HOA’s terrorist watch list, I eventually decided against it (I even had the white robe picked out). Eventually our poop related scavenger hunt concluded successfully and we made our way to our campsite. Lucky for us it was fairly dry. The next morning we realized just how lucky we were. Our neighbor two spots down needed a tractor to pull their trailer out of the muck.
The rain hadn’t let up by the next morning but we still decided to make the most out of our swamp experience by going on a nice family hike. Unlike our first cross country trip, we all brought foul weather clothing, so the rain didn’t really slow us down much, at least for the first hike, even Boomer got into the experience.
Among other trails, the park had a really nice boardwalk that wound through the swamp. While we did see some deer while walking along the road to the swamp trail, surprisingly we didn’t see much in the way of wildlife on the actual hike. Seems like most of the animals were hunkering down through the storm.
After we got back from the first hike, the boys decided to hang out in the RV with Boomer while Lana and I decided to go on a second, slightly more romantic hike on a trail right behind our RV. Normally not really a swampy trail, it was pretty flooded that day.
We were originally scheduled to stay two nights but after a nice first day with not too much else to do we decided to hit the road early to start heading west. If we were more into boating, we probably would have rented a boat and ventured out deeper into the swamp, but we aren’t, and we didn’t (they also have a strict no dogs on boats policy). We ended up leaving at about 3pm without knowing how far we were going to get. In hindsight, we really shouldn’t have hurried. More on that later.
