Okefenokee Swamp

I just discovered that Okefenokee Swamp has a train! The Okefenokee Swamp Railroad. It's on 1.5 miles of track, and it's a steam engine! Benjamin will love that! The train is at Waycross, Georgia and has 4 cars. It does a 30 minute stop at Pioneer Island and circles part of the swamp. At the entrance at Waycross, there's also the 1/2 mile boardwalk into the swamp, an observation tower, and a Swamp Creatures Area. This entrance is open year round 9:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Okefenokee Swamp Park is located 8 miles south of Waycross, Georgia off U.S. 1 South on Highway 177. They have Three Pigs BBQ Snack Bar open from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Admission is $12 for adults and $11 for Benjamin. They have boat tours from here, $16 apiece for 30 minutes or $20 for 1 hour. Don't know what kind of boat... We could get a canoe for $18 per person. The closest camping is Laura Walker State Park. The Holiday Inn there has a deal to stay there and get admission to the park and the train and a boat ride, but it doesn't look like they encourage swimming in the lake there; maybe too many gators. In Waycross, there's Obediah's Okefenok, the 1800's pioneer homestead of Obediah Barber with a 1100 ft. boardwalk and buildings and a museum ($4.50 and $3.50 admission and it says at their web site, "...repeat this "specialWebsitehiddenmessage" when you visit us to receive a 15% discount on souvenir purchases in the gift shop: "There's a swamper on the web!"). Also in Waycross is the Southern Forest World Museum and the Okefenokee Heritage Center Museum.

Boat trails are not connected to the rest of the refuge boat system.
This is the North Entrance 8 miles south of WAYCROSS, Georgia.
Info - 912-283-0583
Waycross and the Okefenokee Swamp
Okefenokee Swamp Park

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The East Entrance is the main U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service entrance to the swamp, the Suwannee Canal Recreation Area, is located 7 miles southwest of FOLKSTON, Georgia, off Highway 121/23. There is a Visitors Center, and from this entrance there's the 9-mile long driving, biking, and walking Swamp Island Drive, a 3/4 mile wooden walkway, The Swamp Walk, leading to a 50-foot high observation tower overlooking the swamp, guided boat tours, motorboat, kayak and canoe rentals, and the restored Chesser Island Homestead.
visitor information - 912-496-7836
boat rental information - 912-496-7156 or 866-THE-SWAMP

Okefenokee Adventures

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The West Entrance is close to the Stephen C. Foster State Park which is 17 miles east of FARGO, Georgia, on Highway Spur 177. Camping and cabins are available at the state park, as well as a boardwalk, boating trails, fishing, guided boat tours, motorboat and canoe rentals, interpretive programs, and a museum.
cabin reservations - 1-800-864-7275
visitor information - 912-637-5274.


It is an 85 mile drive to get to the state park from Folkston, a little over an hour.

Stephen C. Foster State Park has camping ($24) and motor boat rentals.

Okefenokee Swamp

Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge

From March 1 through the end of October, opening hours are half an hour before sunrise and closing is at 7:30 PM.

Distances

Fayetteville, AR to Memphis, TN - 5 hours - 360 miles
Memphis, TN to Clarksdale, MS - 2 hours - 80 miles
Clarksdale, MS to Tupelo, MS - 3 hours - 118 miles
Tupelo, MS to Birmingham, AL - 3 hours - 140 miles
Birmingham, AL to Childersburg, AL - 1 hour - 37 miles
Childersburg, AL to Anniston, AL - 1 hour - 60 miles
Anniston, AL to Bremen, GA - 1 hour - 50 miles
Bremen, GA to Atlanta, GA - 1 hour - 52 miles
Atlanta, GA to Savannah, GA - 4 hours - 255 miles
Savannah, GA to Tybee Island, GA - .25 hour - 20 miles
Tybee Island, GA to Jekyll Island, GA - 2 hours - 100 miles
Jekyll Island, GA to Folkston, GA - 1 hour - 45 miles
Folkston, GA to Waycross, GA - 1 hour - 50 miles
Waycross, GA to Valdosta, GA - 1.5 hours - 60 miles
Valdosta, GA to Tifton, GA - 1 hour - 48 miles
Tifton, GA to Atlanta, GA - 3 hours - 190 miles

Day 1/2 and Day 1

Day 1/2
Fayetteville, AR to Memphis, TN - 5pm - 10pm
Leave after work, drive to Memphis, get a room

Day 1
Go to the Peabody in the morning and watch the ducks come down - I need to find out what time they come down; we'll leave right after, maybe grab some breakfast and...
drive to Clarksdale, MS (2 hours), see the crossroads, maybe the Delta Blues Museum, have some lunch and then...
drive to Tupelo, MS (3 hours) - maybe here by 5:00 pm? probably too late to do anything but eat dinner and drive a little closer to Birmingham (3 hours) so we can get up in the morning and

Birmingham, AL to Childersburg, AL - 1 hour
Childersburg, AL to Anniston, AL - 1 hour

While I'm planning this vacation...

Benjamin and I saw a commercial on TV this morning for Silver Dollar City. He wanted to go, of course, and I told him it wasn't far away. He asked if it was as far as Mena, and I thought about the same, looked it up in TripMaker, and it's 2 1/2 hours, just like from here to Mena. So, I'm looking in TripMaker and see all these places to go around there. There's Eureka Springs which we've talked about a lot anyway, and there's that steam engine to ride. There's Silver Dollar City and Dinosaur Park and Duck boats and caverns. We should have just gone there instead of this trip to Georgia. But, they don't have a museum with dinosaurs or a swamp or Terry's brother or a beach, so I guess we'll continue with this one and know we can run up there in the fall or something.

Places to Go II

The Jackson Zoo - Jackson, Mississippi
open daily 9 - 5 - about $25 for admission for all of us and parking and to ride the train.
I don't know if we'll be going this way, though. Mainly Terry wanted to go through Shreveport and go to that fish market.

DeSoto Caverns Park
5181 DeSoto Caverns Parkway
Childersburg, AL

Route Map as of May

Here is the map of our vacation route as it currently stands; we might not have time to go to all these places, though.


From Rand McNally TripMaker
Stopovers in:

• Memphis, TN - We would go through there anyway and it's the only place we'll go in Tennessee, and I want to get a Tennessee geocache (there are four in MLK park just off the interstate); there's also the Peabody ducks which I have seen, but Terry and Benjamin have not. I've wanted to go to Mud Island also, but maybe not this time.
• Clarksdale, Mississippi - I want to go to the crossroads there; Terry will probably try to talk me out of this one.
• Where the Natchez Trace crosses through near Tupelo...
• Birmingham, Alabama has the McWane Science Center with the dinosaur exhibit and Vulcan park with that big statue.
• Childersburg, Alabama where they have DeSoto Caverns; they have rides and stuff besides the caverns; it seems like the best deal on this one is to combine the couples pac deal (with 6 attractions) with one child's cavern tour which would be $61. We might need more than 6 attraction tickets, though. I think Benjamin will like the water balloon fight and the water spraying labyrinth and I really want to do the maze and they have a lot of other stuff.
• Anniston, Alabama has the Anniston Museum of Natural History; this one I'm not sure about; it looks like a decent museum, but I don't see any dinosaurs, so I don't know if it would be worth it.
• Bremen, Georgia and visit Terry's brother
• Atlanta, Georgia is a big city; they have a lot of stuff; I was in Atlanta once, stuck in the airport for 4 hours by myself when I was about 11 years old. I think we might narrow it down to the Fernbank Museum of Natural History with the dinosaurs and Stone Mountain Park with skyride, duck boats, train, etc. If we come back this way, we could do one on the way and one on the way back, but we never know where we're going to end up on vacation, so that might not work.
  
• Savannah, Georgia and Tybee Island - look for ghosts, go to Bonaventure Cemetery, see the historic squares; Erin says to go down on the pier on Tybee after dark; I hear the whole city is haunted, so we probably just need to go out at night a lot. We need to eat at the Pirate House which is haunted. Erin also said there's a lot of stuff for kids on the pier. I need to ask her again about that crab place where we can eat. There's also the Echo Chamber geocache in Savannah. Also need to find a dolphin tour around here for Benjamin. I have this list of haunted places in Savannah, but I don't know where they are; searches bring up all the places with haunted tours, but they don't give the addresses of the places of course. I'd like to make my own tour. We might want to go to the Oatland Island Wildlife Center; it's supposed to be haunted, too.
• Jekyll Island is on down the coast, and there are lots of geocaches there.
• Folkston, Georgia has the Folkston Funnel where the trains go through, and there's a cache there and lots of other caches here, and there's also one of the entrances to the Okefenokee Swamp.
• The Okefenokee Swamp has three entrances (actually more), and I'm trying to figure out what all we want to do. I'll have to organize all my swamp info...
• Waycross, GA has an entrance to the Okefenokee Swamp also. The Southern Forest World Museum is there, but I don't know if that's something we would get into.
  
• Valdosta, GA has the Wild Adventures Theme Park where they have the zoo animals and also rides and a water park.
• Tifton, GA has the Agrirama where they have the 1800s farms, town, and industry.

Now, I have to look again and see what all I missed and then figure out what we don't have time for...

Places to Go Along the Way

As of May 24

• McWane Science Center - Birmingham, AL
  *This place has a new dinosaur exhibit for the summer and other science related stuff, aquarium with jellyfish, IMAX
  Mon-Sat 10am-6pm, Sun 12noon-6pm - $50
• Vulcan Park - Birmingham, AL
  *This place has the world's biggest cast iron statue - I think we need to see this since it's the world's biggest.
  
• Moundville Archaeological Park - Alabama
• Agrirama - Tifton GA
  *Georgia's Museum of Agriculture and Historic Village
  They have a steam engine with a 1.3 mile scenic tour.
  Open Tuesday - Saturday 9 am - 5 pm, Closed: Sunday & Monday
  
• Underground Atlanta
• DeSoto Caverns Park - AL
  
• Alabama Adventure Theme Park
• Chickasaw Village on Hwy 78 in Mississippi
• Natural Bridge
  
• Birmingham Zoo
• Magic Adventure Theme Park
• Wild Adventures Theme Park - Valdosta, GA
  *They have zoo animals and rides - 2 in 1
  I-75, Exit 13, 10am - 8pm or 10pm, $92
  zoo animals, rides, water park, train
• Jekyll Island
  
• Tybee Island
  dolphin tours and a lighthouse
  
• Captain Mikes Dolphin Tours on Tybee Island
  Lazaretto Creek Marina
  Tour rates are $15.00 for adults and $8.00 for children, 12 and under. Reservation Recommended.
  

* wanna go there

What to Bring

I need to start a list of things to bring:

• camera
• disposable cameras (for Benjamin)
  
• waterproof disposable camera (in case we go to a water park or something)
  
• beach toys
• Benjamin's boogie board
  
• swimsuits (need to buy one for Benjamin - no net!)
• beach towels
• rolls of toilet paper, paper towels
• camping stuff? (Terry's department)
• Benjamin's road toys
• sandals and tennis shoes (mine and Benjamin's)
• atlas and other maps
• geocaches
• Benjamin's travel book

OK, we looked up a few:

• Moundville Archaeological Park
• Underground Atlanta
• DeSoto Caverns Park
• Alabama Adventure Theme Park
  

Hittin' the Books

In the old days, before the online maps and the ability to look up anything and any place, I used the Rand McNally U.S. Road Atlas and checked all the little red boxes to find places to go. Later on, over the years, I would find the little red boxes, the attractions, and look them up on the Web. I do a lot of my road trip research on the Web now, but I still like to get out the atlas, and if it's an old one, I go ahead and use a highlighter and mark the route and then go through and find all those red squares, and make a list, and Google them, see which ones look good. Benjamin's finally old enough to help now, to play maps with me. He has the patience of a five year old, but he gets excited when we find anything with the word "park", "magic", or "dinosaur" in it. He reads the letters of the fine print of the attraction names that my eyes can't read anymore, and I tell him what it says.
Lately, on my own, I've been looking into Clarksdale, Mississippi where Hwy 61 crosses Hwy 49, the crossroads where Robert Johnson took his guitar down and had it tuned by the devil. I would like to see that, maybe take a pencil down there and get the devil to sharpen it for me or adjust some settings on my camera. So, I've Googled it and Google Mapped it, and I've seen pictures of a sign there at the crossroads, but I'm still not sure where it is on the map, still working on that. I would just rather not drive all over Clarksdale looking for it, and every time I look up anything about Clarksdale, I wind up with that song, Last Train to Clarksville, stuck in my head.
A lot of the red squares in the Rand McNally are race tracks, golf courses, civic centers, city halls, and colleges, so we go through (Benjamin and I) , along the route that I've done using mainly interstates, looking around 30 to 40 miles out from the route (maybe more if something looks really interesting) and find anything that looks good. So far on our list to Google (I'm waiting on him while he plays Zoo Tycoon) are:

• Underground Atlanta
• Chickasaw Village on Hwy 78 in Mississippi
• Natural Bridge, De Soto Caverns Park, and Moundville Archeological Park in Alabama
• Birmingham Zoo, Magic Adventure Theme Park, Statue of Liberty, and Vulcan Statue in Birmingham

We're also needing to sit down with a calendar and figure out when we can do this.
And then I put anything we decide on into my ancient version of Rand McNally Tripmaker and get the mileage and the times.
Maybe more tonight...