Yesterday was mainly a long drive finally escaping Florida. I had hoped to continue up the eastern seaboard, but my map doesn’t indicate any obvious roads for doing that in Georgia. It looks like the Interstate 95 is about as close as you can get by car, and that is ten to fifteen miles west of the ocean. There are a few roads that go east to the ocean serving the occasional towns, but they go east-west, not north-south. I decided to give up on visiting the Georgia coast and just make a bee line north traveling further inland along the highway 301 route, by-passing Jacksonville. It was an interesting and pretty route through trees and a few small towns along the way. My drive ended up being about 230 miles, much longer than my goal of “close to 150 miles.”

Once I entered Georgia my GPS display began to indicate a large body of water just to the west. I couldn’t see any water, and there were no roadsigns indicating what was there, but it was clear that I was near something large and wet. Eventually I started seeing the word “Okefenokee” showing up in the name of businesses giving me the hint that perhaps I should pay a little more attention. The reason that I missed the fact that I was almost driving in the Okefenokee Swamp was because of a habit I have acquired concerning handling my paper maps.

My car GPS screen shows a very “zoomed in” view that seems to vary from less than a mile to up to perhaps ten miles extent. Nothing beyond five miles away shows on the display, and even then it seldom names things besides nearby roads. That works for overall getting from place-to-place, but doesn’t provide much of a global perspective concerning what interesting things might be nearby. I use a paper map for staying oriented, and to check the GPS because it has a tendency to get things very wrong from time-to-time. It is not a good idea to just trust the GPS and blindly follow its directions. I have already chronicled a few instances of driving many miles to discover that the road dead-ends or took me down paths that just loop and then dissolve.

The paper maps are important, but BIG. While fine for us on a tabletop, they are difficult to deal with in the car, so I carefully fold them into a small 8″x8″ square showing my intended route. That usually works fine for keeping things under control and allowing me to glance at the map as I go through the day. In this case, the fold hid the fact that I was traveling along the swamp, and its presence didn’t show on the GPS display. I almost missed it entirely.

I finally came to be big sign pointing to the Okefenokee Swamp State Park about 25 miles out of my intended route. I have always been very fond of the name, so I decided it was worth adding fifty miles to my driving day to see it.

The State Park is sanitized tourist spot, with nicely paved roads and a parking lot in front of the visitor center, nice paved walking paths, buildings displaying almost nothing, and a guard station ready to receive your $20 fee to see the trees and a bit of water logged ground. The visitor center was filled with mementos for sale, a shelf full of snack food, and the skeleton of a large alligator. This building’s main reason for being is to sell tickets for their “adventures” of riding in a small boat for 30 minutes (a $30 a person), or riding though the trees on a narrow gauge railroad (for an additional $30 fee). I opted to take the free walking path.

The walking path was nice and quiet. I had a hard time finding a way to get a meaningful photograph, finally settling on just a simple photo of a little creek and some trees. I saw very few critters on my short walk, the water was almost black so it hid anything that might lurk there, and the foliage so dense that it would be very difficult to spot anything. It really reminded me of some scenes out of movie that I saw a few years ago – perhaps it was “Deliverance,” perhaps not. The movie included a jail break from a Georgia prison by a couple of guys who hid in the swamp, staying with a group of people who lived in the swamp hiding from whatever it is that they had to hide from. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that this park was the settling for the filming, it looked exactly the same to me. I tried to imagine trying to live there without making a clearing and buildings, it would be a difficult and uncomfortable place to camp.

I was glad to have taken the time to visit the swamp, but felt more like I was looking at it through a display glass than actually getting any “feel” for the place. I suppose that was for safety reasons, there ARE giant alligators and nasty snakes in those woods.

Continuing on toward Jesup was uneventful with the small exception that my GPS got lost and couldn’t find the hotel, and the hotel sign was hidden by a tree from my direction of travel. I overshot a couple of miles, turned around and easily saw the sign on the return trip. The main criteria that I had used for selecting the specific hotel was the need for a washer and dryer because I was out of underware, socks, shirts and clean shorts – basically everything. It was laundry time again. It turned out that they hotel doesn’t actually have a washer and dryer – they just said they did. I always call the hotels direct because this sort of thing happens almost every time I got through a hotel booking agent. They have no clue about anything specific, and in fact often don’t even know where the hotel is located. It is common to get reservations for a different hotel in a different state and if you aren’t paying attention you don’t get a reservation and since I book on the same day there is no refund. The services such as Expedia and the like know nothing of anything specific about the place such as availability of food other than fast food, availability of amenities, room or floor selection or anything important.

So I was unable to do my laundry at the hotel, and I arrived after 5:00 due to my side-trip to the swamp. Luckily the hotel had a flyer from a nearby service that could take care of my washing for me – for a small fee of course. The flyer said they were open from 7:00 am to 8:00 pm, so I had time. However, they meant 6:00 pm not 8:00 pm, so I would have to wait until around noon on the following day, and there wasn’t time to do the clothes in the laundromat. Luckily the nice lady offered to work a few minutes past quitting time to take care of my clothes. I dropped them off, went to a local bistro for a beer while waiting, and it all worked out fine.

That pretty much describes the excitement for the day. Many days are filled with similar hours of just driving, and taking care of dinner and necessities.