Some photos from a 4 day trip on the Okefenokee last weekend, where I explored the Eastern side for the first time. This sunset is from my second day of paddling. I paddled out of a prairie, along the old logging canal and into another. In total, it was only 15 miles or so but paddling on swamps can be surprisingly difficult and slow going. Peat rises from the bottom of the swamp grass and wildflowers grow among the lily pads on floating earth. Pitcher plants are tall and dense in places and frogs are everywhere. Dense lily pads and large peat islands often blocked the water trail. Sometimes those islands could be pushed away but sometimes they had to be pushed down. In other places, the peat seems to sit just below the surface and I would have to pole my way across, literally stabbing the blade of my paddle to the bottom and pulling myself forward. By the end of the day, my boat was covered in peat, underwater plants that had become stuck to my paddle, an insane population of odd harmless insect that would sit still until I startled them and 3 small that stayed with me the next two nights. I took the photograph of the sunset when I still had one more mile to go and I came to the platform after paddling for an hour in complete darkness. The grey birds are sand hill cranes from earlier that evening and miles away that morning and the black-crested night heron from the morning after which I came upon along the water trail and almost indifferent to me. I saw many pairs before coming across this one but they are usually an extremely elusive bird and the rest left their perches as soon as they saw me. The alligator in the third picture is from one of the platforms I camped on at sunrise. It reemerged later while I was bent over, packing my front hatch by reaching down into my kayak which was still in the water. When I looked up, it was about six feet away looking directly at me. It was only 8 ft long and I find nothing scary about alligators but it did make me wonder what it was doing and I guess what I was as well.