Let's start at the beginning...

In the beginning...

This past weekend I began thinking to myself, how am I going to share with my friends this amazing adventure that I took with Dad and 8 other people over the weekend? Well, the best way would be a blog, not a note/status on Facebook or a billion updates on twitter. But even this I’m sure a couple people are thinking, “Way to be original, Milledge. Copying Kobie on the blog idea.” But, honestly, how else am I going to get this gem out to you all?

But here’s the thing, it makes no sense to do a one and done on a blog in this case. Kobie is at least taking 4-6 months on a huge nation-wide adventure and will have tons and tons of fun and interesting blog posts. Me, I could maybe do four or five on this one adventure (which I am), so why not make it a full-fledged kayaking blog of my future adventures as I tackle the likes of Horse Creek, the Augusta Canal, the Savannah River, the Edisto River, Stevens Creek, Betty’s Branch and such? It’s perfect, I tell ya. Perfect

So, here’s my preface to it all: I’m Milledge, a guy in my late 20’s who has been kayaking for about five years now. I live in Aiken, SC and have done a bit of traveling the past few years and I love it. I love seeing new places, photographing everything I can and mostly, just being outdoors. My dad, also Milledge, decided he wanted to try something fun that the whole family could enjoy back five years ago and that is how he and I caught the kayaking bug. There’s also my mom, Renee, and my sister, Nancy, who will from time to time join in on our adventures. Back in 2009 the four of us went on our first paddle on Clarks Hill/Lake Thurmond one evening and I loved it and dad did, too. He bought a kayak, then I bought a kayak, then he bought another for Mom and thus our fleet began. We have been kayaking pretty regularly since then and Dad has been all over the state checking out different locations and I have been lucky enough to join in on some of those adventures and even take a few of my own.

Since I moved back to the area from Montana and northern Georgia, Dad and I have really been trying to hit the water more and more and he has been trying to up the ante a bit. We love doing our local areas, including those I listed above, as well as a few others. But sometimes, you need variety in where you paddle. I feel pretty confident I could paddle the canal, and Savannah River from the Rapids Pavilion down to Lake Olmstead and the North Augusta boat ramp almost blindfolded. Same goes for parts of the Edisto, Betty’s Branch and also Horse Creek below Langley Pond. (FYI, I’m not being serious nor going to because, as I have learned along the way, while the actual body of water changes slowly over time, other things like debris can change the course, but having done these sections so many times, they become almost second nature.) So, we’ve been doing things like new sections of the Edisto and Dad has kayaked Hunting Island and some other neat places.

This all leads up to a few months back. Dad finally figured out he wanted to do the Okefenokee Swamp. Now, swamp makes you think of a few things: lots of water, lots of trees and tree root knees, alligators and worst of all, mosquitos. So, timing was key on when we would go. Dad did his research and found that the peak and best months to go were March and April. But, you can only schedule 3 day, 2 night trips and can only reserve 2 months ahead of your arrival during these two months because it’s quite popular they say. Makes it for a bit of a pain in the butt, but I can understand and appreciate that because you don’t want some jerk hogging the swamp, even if that jerk is one from our group. So, we picked this past weekend (Friday, March 7 - Sunday, March 9) kind of randomly and Dad made the phone calls two months ahead of time and we got our reservations. Somehow, he was beaten to the punch by another group and we didn’t get what was our first choice, but that ended up being okay with us.

Now, they claim that the platforms they use as shelters out on the water can house 20 fairly comfortably (but once we get to that point, I call BS unless those 20 are small boy scouts sleeping under the clouds), so Dad opened the trip to 20 people and was not picky about who could come as long as they understood we were going to paddle and enjoy it. Dad shared the idea with members of the Canoe and Kayak Club of Augusta as well as a few other friends. He ended up gathering a group of 10 total people including him and myself. We also had Bob, dad’s best kayaking budding and bromance, Bernie, the acting kayak club president I believe, and his wife Kim, Dave Rochelle (might have spelled your name wrong here, Dave, sorry), Dave S. and Jeff who are former boy scout leaders and friends who have done a lot of kayaking and canoeing, and also Allison and Nancy who are a little new to the whole kayaking thing. Not a bad group, if you ever get to meet these people.

And now a bit of background on the Okefenokee Swamp, straight from it’s website (www.okefenokeeswamp.com):

“The Great Okefenokee Swamp is one of North America’s most unspoiled, fascinating and precious natural areas. It is the largest, intact, un-fragmented, freshwater and black water wilderness swamp in North America.

“ ‘Okefenokee’ was the name used by the indigenous Creeks and was believed to mean, ‘Land of Trembling Earth’. As it turns out, that’s a popular but very loose and many believe incorrect translation. ‘Oka’ means water in the Hitchiti Creek language and ‘Fenoke’ means shaking in Hitchiti. So the original meaning of Okefenokee is more like ‘Waters Shaking’ not the commonly held ‘Land of  Trembling Earth.’

“Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge is an awesomely vast expanse of wilderness southern swamp covering approximately 700 square miles and located mostly in the southeast corner of Georgia, U.S.A.

“The Okefenokee is crisscrossed by over 120 miles of paddle and motor boat water trails. It is a major destination for wetlands nature lovers paddlers and boaters. The Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge offers a good number of wonderfully easy to sometimes extremely challenging day use paddle only water trails. Also enjoy numerous excitingly fun to navigate dual use paddle or motor boat water trails all set up for the public to access without an overnight permit or fee requirement. A very controlled and limited number of overnight wilderness paddle trail fee permits for overnight camping paddlers are issued through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (the administrative and managing government agency at Okefenokee NWR).”

Both Dad and Dave R. also looked a bit more up and the main canal that we used to get into the swamp, the Suwanee Canal, was dredged so the swamp could be forested for its cypress and other trees in the late 1800’s I believe. There are still bits of equipment here and there I heard as well, but it is now a nature preserve and when you look at a map of the area, it’s very difficult to take it all in and realize there are huge sections that seem to rarely be utilized.

The refuge is also home to a lot of cool plants and animals. It’s hard to put into words what all we saw and didn’t see but you have your different conifer trees, Spanish moss, lily pads, and supposedly other cool plants that I am sure bloom/are more prevalent during the summer months. Then you also have your animals like woodpeckers, alligators, egrets, cranes, herons, hawks, owls, otters, bears and so on. So many different animals call the area home, it’s hard to find room for it all and we didn’t even see a decent fraction of them, I feel.

So that gives you a quick glance at what I was up against heading into a three-day, two-night adventure on the Okefenokee Swamp with 9 other people. We left Friday morning with 10 people, and arrived 50 hours later back at the boat ramp with 7. No, really. But, more about that in the final posts.

That is the preface for my first blog. I’m hoping to write the rest tonight/tomorrow night and have these posts up as soon as possible along with a few of the thousands of pictures I took along the way. I hope you enjoy reading about my adventures as I continue to explore new and old water ways.