When Bobby left law enforcement in Calcasieu Parish and moved to Georgia to become part of the State’s Park Service it was to slow down a bit, get a little far away from the headaches of rowdy oil field workers, and not have his family worry. Now, he looks over Georgia’s Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge (NWR)- about 300,000 acres of swamp, trains new rangers, looks after maintenance crews and office workers. The park is a certified Dark Sky area and attracts star watchers. It is so remote that cell services doesn’t exist. No LTE. No bars…
Okefenokee is a native American word meaning “The Land of Trembling Earth”. Over time, the swamp creates islands called peat bogs. They are made from dead plant material—often mosses- that you can carefully walk across (see photo of Josh, the Interpretive Ranger below). We have no idea how we wound up in Stephen Foster State park…I thought we were heading to Jacksonville, FL. or the beach. There is only one entrance/exit to the park and you have to enter via the southwest. If you are coming from the east, you have to drive all the way around it. We arrive at sunset just as the office is closing down and they tell us to take any camp spot that looks good…
We are out in the middle of nowhere camping in an old ‘Swamp Thing ‘Movie-type set or living in a Pogo the Possum cartoon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogo_(comic_strip) 
In the Okefenokee NWR, there are alligators a plenty, birds a plenty, mosquitoes a plenty and just about anything else that could bite or burrow under the skin. Guests were only ‘a plenty’ in Fall and Spring. The Indian tribes, known and unknown, that once lived in the swamp are long gone. The most difficult job for his maintenance crews was maintaining remote camping platforms. Back in the day, people were a little more ‘hardy’ -willing to hop into a canoe and paddle out into the swamp ten or more miles, pitch a tent and spend a few days. Now day, not many folks do that, but the park still has a dozen or so sites available. When a new interpretive ranger came on board, Bobby would take them around and show them how to get to these different camp sites. When Josh was hired by the state and was given the Okefenokee, he found himself with Bobby in a flat bottom boat headed out for a day of learnings…
We hop on our bikes to explore & enjoy the sunset. The first thing we notice is there are lots of alligators in the swamp land. Not just a handful or two, but in this swamp, there are 15k alligators…and Douglas wants us to get in a canoe tomorrow…
Nothing too exciting about the first 2 platforms they checked on. The wood was holding up, the fire pit hadn’t seen much use and the pit toilet…well, it was still a pit toilet. The 3rd site had some left over tin cans on it that had already been faded by the weather that they collected up, as the afternoon’s sun began to lower. Bobby felt that could safely make it to ‘bearclaw’ platform at the furthest outpost and still have plenty of time to make it back to HQ before dusk…
BTW, our cupboard is bare so we try to pull together a semi-healthy meal of leftover Popeye’s chicken & broccoli -LOL-
The next day Douglas suggests we take a canoe out in the swamp. I remind him that the last time we were in a canoe together was on the Megong River in Laos and we flipped over 3 times. I also mention the 15k alligators in the swamp… we decide to take a guided boat tour instead.
Lots of close up wildlife to view including large Barred owl.
As they started coming out of a canal leading to Minter’s Lake they saw something that wasn’t right. Something that was very wrong- a human skull on a pike sticking out of the water. Bobby’s police senses went into overdrive, pulse quickened, right hand slid from the tiller to check on his pistol…
When they got closer to the platform and the skull, they realized the skull was plastic. What it was doing out in this part of the swamp and on a platform that maybe, at best, had been officially used three or four times within the last year, was an interesting question. When they got back to HQ, they found out a member of the maintenance crew had creatively put it out there.
