We headed to the Okefenokee Swamp, a little over an hour from Brunswick. There is a National Wildlife Refuge there and some parks where you can take a boat ride through some of the swamp – or rent kayaks or canoes and paddle on your own. We’re definitely in the “take a boat ride” camp.
The Okefenokee Swamp Park had a number of displays of some live and mostly stuffed animals – including a few baby alligators and the remains (one of bones and one taxidermied) of two of the previous alpha male alligators that had been in that area of the swamp. Both of them lived to be quite old in alligator years.
The park had been pretty deserted when we arrived; but by the time of our scheduled boat tour we had a nearly full boat. The guide was quite informative, but peppered her talk with the standard collection of guide jokes. There was a lot of beautiful flora in the swamp, but no fauna or reptiles emerged. We did see a great blue heron that was only a few feet away from the boat as we glided past.
After returning to Brunswick we walked a few blocks to see Lover’s Tree up close. The route from the main road to the AirBnB goes down Albany Street where the tree is located. There are a lot of live oak trees on the streets and in the parks in the neighborhood where the AirBnB is located. Many of them are quite large and quite old. They think that Lover’s Tree is about 900 years old. There is some complicated story about the origin of it’s name; but seeing the tree up close and walking down the streets which are lined with live oak trees covered with Spanish moss (which we have learned is neither Spanish nor moss) was a nice ending to the day.
