Our Bucket List Adventure: Day 3 Morning
While this is the 3rd day of our entire adventure, it was the second day on the Amtrak California Zephyr train. And it was fantastic! We traveled through the Rockies and Sierra Nevada Mountains, and I took almost 700 pictures in one day.
Our Bucket List Adventure: Day 2
Phase 1 Complete. . .
Phase 1 was getting to Chicago. Not much to that really. Thankfully, we weren’t expecting great things in Chicago, because we sure didn’t get them. Our memories of Chicago are wrapped in lots of rain and expensive taxis.
And one truly AWFUL continental breakfast.
Our Bucket List Adventure: Day 1
Now that we’re back from our bucket list adventure of riding Amtrak’s California Zephyr train from Chicago to San Francisco and back, it all seems kind of surreal. We did so much in a relatively short amount of time that it’s hard to process it all.
And then there’s the pictures. Oh yeah….
Oconaluftee Visitor Center
At last, I got to see the new Oconaluftee Visitor Center In Great Smoky Mountains National Park!
We just got back from one of our many trips happening this fall. This time we were in Hickory, North Carolina, area so The Farmer could see our grandson playing football at Lenoir-Rhyne University. On the way home I finally got the wish I’ve had since April 1st (no fooling!). We dropped down from Hickory to the Cherokee, North Carolina, area so we could stop at the Oconaluftee Visitor Center.
Where’s the Okefenokee Swamp?
If we’d been making a telephone call to the Okefenokee Swamp, we would have got this message, “We’re sorry, the Okefenokee isn’t at home right now.”
Yep, we went to see the Okefenokee Swamp on the way down to Florida, and imagine our surprise when it wasn’t there!
Where's the Okefenokee Swamp???
We walked clear to the end of “The Trembling Earth Nature Trail” board walk at the Stephen C. Foster State Park in Georgia, and didn’t catch even a scent of water.
There were things like this bush growing out of an old cypress stump, called “tussock growth.”
Tussock growth in old cypress stump.
But no water.
There were shrubs of all kinds growing along the trail, too.
Coastal Doghobble in Okefenokee Swamp
These shrubs grow in dense colonies in open to shady habitats. They are supposed to grow in wet to moist sites, but at the moment… no water.
One of the things I was really looking forward to seeing were the carnivorous plants. We did see some Yellow and Purple Bladderwort.
Yellow and Purple Bladderwort
It’s supposed to be a floating aquatic plant, but… no water! Swimming prey is supposed to touch the trigger hairs that operate a sort of trap door that opens and creates a sucking action to draw in the prey. But how can the plants get any food when there’s no swimming prey because there’s no water???
At another spot on the trail, we saw this sign for the carnivorous plants:
Here's the sign!
At last, what I’d been waiting for! But wait!
Where's the plants???
Oh no! I’d been looking forward to seeing these plants for a year since I read about this last Thanksgiving! but NO water, so NO plants!
And here at sign 18, the guide said:
“Moving Water – Most people think a swamp is stagnant water, full of green algae. That can be true, but here in the Okefenokee, the water is actually moving. Even here under the board walk you can see a surface current, especially at the base of trees.”
But oddly enough, I was having trouble seeing the current at the base of the trees. . .
What current???
Oh yeah… NO WATER!
The fact there was no water meant we could see these cypress knees more easily since they weren’t partially or totally submerged.
Cypress Knees left high and dry.
Lots and lots of cypress knees visible.
I can see knees clearly now, the water's gone. . .
We could even see cypress knees under the boardwalk. . .
Cypress Knees under Boardwalk of The Trembling Earth Nature Trail
It was easy, because, after all…. there was NO WATER!
Of course, there were things that would have been there, water or not, like the Red Blanket Lichen on the sides of this tree. . .
Red Blanket Lichen on tree bark.
But it was a little funny and a little sad to see this sign:
And then look up from reading it to see this sight. . .
Dry Wetlands... kind of an oxymoron, isn't it?
At least there was a lagoon of water by the park office, even though the water levels were way down from normal.
Water at last!
One of the park rangers told us that because of the dry weather, we’d have to go 1/4 mile or more to find actual water in the Okefenokee Swamp. There were no boat tours because the water levels were so low.
At least we did see ONE little alligator!
Little Alligator in Okefenokee Swamp
I guess next time we’ll call ahead to make sure the swamp is at home before we visit!