2005/03 Deep South trip - Canoeing the Suwanee River |
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Tuesday March 15th
Tuesday was a lot cooler, down into the sixties with a cool breeze. We’d planned on going out in a boat, so that’s what we did, just adding an extra layer of clothing. Sandie wasn’t too keen on going out in the kayak, with just a thin piece of 
synthetic rubber between us and the alligators. This was despite my assurances that the hull had been treated with alligator repellant. So, instead, we rented a substantial aluminium canoe, a Grumman battleship, and headed out onto Billy’s Lake, a wide and deep part of the Suwanee River. The boat trips were not running this day, so we were spared having to dodge Tony the Ranger’s pontoon (and his voice). The cold weather was keeping most of the alligators under the water. Certainly there were none hanging out on logs like the previous day, but we saw a few half out of the water, tucked in behind bushes, out of the wind.
We went a couple of miles upstream, into the wind, to eat lunch at Billy’s Island. Billy was Billy Bowlegs, the last chief of 
the Indians who originally lived in the Okefenokee. The island was occupied by two families and then it became a town for a while when the lumber companies came in the log to giant cypress trees, much bigger than what’s left today. Today, all that’s left is the cemetery, a few pieces of machinery, and some burial mounds.
We tried to explore the backwaters past the island, but soon got mired in water lilies and cypress knees, so we went back along the main route and then up along what Tony the Ranger called Pinball Alley. This is a narrow and fast channel that’s 
full of big trees, with lots of cypress knees lurking between them like malevolent gnomes, so it’s very easy for a boat to end up bouncing like a pinball. Further upstream, things got even tighter, and we’d have had problems getting through with the kayak’s paddle width. We went a few miles upstream to Minnie’s Lake and then floated back down with the current and breeze. Pinball Alley was more of a challenge this time and we took liberties with some of those gnomes.
It was getting dark as we came into the park’s boat basin. Just as we were parking the canoe, we spooked an alligator that had been dozing in the bushes so there was foliage and spray flying as it panicked and dived for the water. By now it was into the fifties, with a cold wind. The rain came soon after dark.
Wednesday March 16th
The rain continued all night and the morning was dark with thunderstorms and torrential rain. The campground was partly underwater. The ditches which made walking to the bathroom in the dark such fun were now full to the top. I’d joked to Sandie that these ditches were there to make it easy for the alligators to mingle with the campers, but as we left the campground there was a ‘gator lurking in the ditch by the stop sign.
It’s easy to become casual around alligators as they look so peaceful and static, but later on that day a motorist whose car had broken down got too close a pond and was attacked and killed by a nine-footer, no larger than we’d seen in the Okefenokee.
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