After two glorious days in the Okefenokee Swamp, we had to leave our solitude to overnight some tax papers and mail some other items.
It's 20 miles from Stephen Foster State Park to the nearest town, Fargo. Since we were going to be out, we decided to look for a coin laundry as well. We knew we might have to go the additional 30 miles northwest to the larger town of Homerville.
On our way, Richard & JoAnn suggested that we stop by the visitor's center in Fargo. We took that advice. The new building is top notch, and the ten minute film on the swamp was excellent - especially since we just lived much of it the last couple of days.
You know how we like to read about the areas we visit, so we picked up a book called "Okefinokee Album" (officially it is Okefenokee, but history indicates it probably should be Okefinokee). The book is a historical perspective of families that made their home within the swamp and how the swamp turned back man's attempt to tame it. We look forward to learning more.
We found out there was no place to do laundry in Fargo, so we decided to drive on to Homerville. Just as we arrived in Homerville, we got cell phone coverage. I had three voicemails and Linda had two - we had to drive 50 miles to get cell phone service. That's not a bad thing. :)
We stopped for lunch at Mama's Kountry Table. It was not great, but we found that Georgia drawl I was looking for. :)
We made our stop by the post office and found the nicest young man. It may have been the most pleasant experience we have ever had at a post office. He was former military, but had only been to three other states in his life. We wanted to take him along and show him the country. :)
At the Wash Tub coin laundry, I started our new book while Linda washed and dried. There was no laundromat lady to tell me her life story as usually happens, but the older male attendant quickly sat down beside me and started talking .... "Nice truck."
Here we go. Here come the questions about the truck. "Is that a diesel? What size engine? Is that a 1-ton or what? What's the axle ratio? What year is that?" Hold on there while I go get the owners manual - you have me confused with Tim Taylor of Tool Time. All I know is that it is a Ford F-450 and it is the smallest truck I could get that was capable of pulling my fifth wheel. :)
What is it about me? There are always other people doing laundry - why am I always the one that attracts a conversation? Linda is the social one - why don't they talk to her? :)
Don't get me wrong, I'm always polite and friendly and I have heard some good stories in the laundromat. I'm just curious as to why people go out of their way to sit down next to me and start talking - even when I'm clearly trying to read something. Now it's a scientific experiment - I must figure this out. :)
We decided to stop in Fargo on the way back for a gallon of milk. Yikes - $4 milk! I know they have cows here - I've seen them.
That's one of the pitfalls of such a rural campground. It's a long drive to get what you need and there is no competition among retailers to keep prices down. Another compromise - but the trade-off is a good one for us.
Back at the campground, we took a walk. Since I had no pictures for the day, I snapped a better one of our rig and site.
Here are a couple more of the campground. The first one is our friends' Richard & JoAnn site - they are veterans at this park and claim that it is the best site here.
The sites are fairly far apart with vegetation between most of them. They are grassy with sand and no concrete pads, but they blend in with area nicely.
Then we relaxed in our loungers under the awning. I just had to take this photo from my perspective - reclined back, watching our bird feeders and the sun setting through the trees.
We have not had any problem with mosquitoes during the day, but they do come out when the sun starts to go down. They chased Linda inside. We have heard from others that this is a place to come in any season other than summer. They say the mosquitoes, deer flies, and yellow flies are simply unbearable when it gets and stays hot.
I stayed outside for a bit longer and continued to read. I just have to share a couple of things from the first couple of chapters of "Okefinokee Album." The book was published in 1981 and was written based on the notes of a naturalist, Francis Harper, that explored the area and befriended the people from 1912 until 1951. Delma Presley compiled the notes and wrote the book that Francis Harper always meant to write.
Presley wrote the following about Harper: "He had carefully recorded and preserved all that he had experienced in the Okefinokee, but more important, he had captured the spirit of the swampers and passed on the knowledge and the wisdom of the way of life he had shared with them. Ultimately he wanted the readers of his Okefinokee book to consider their philosophies of life in a materialistic age. In important ways the people of the Okefinokee had persuaded Francis Harper to reconsider his approach to people and to nature itself. They had taught him to be more human, he felt, and to be more concerned with the deeper values of life; he experienced this awareness in small, often unnoticed, moments of communication with his swamp friends."
In 1968, Harper himself had written the following about his hopes for mankind based on what he learned from the Okefinokee people: "Would that we might yet turn back the pages of history and lead once more such a simple, wholesome, abundant life! But what hope is there, while we abandon spritual freedom in favor of creature comforts?"
More from Presley: "They [the Okefinokee folk] put a premium on what some have called "the inner life," and they assumed that wise people cultivated that part of life as a matter of course. These individuals may have been considered exemplary because they had achieved that vital balance between the inner and outer self. Strangers to the area have been known to call these people "eccentric." As Uncle Lone Thrift, keeper of the boats at Suwannee Lake, used to say: "I'm peculiar to the average man." To his way of thinking, the "average man" was so caught up in the materialistic goals of modern life that he had no place for quiet moments of contemplation. Uncle Lone was proud to be called "peculiar" or "stubborn."
Those excerpts summarized what we are trying to do with RV-Dreams. We are advocating simpler lives, deeper values, the inner life, quiet moments of contemplation, being more human. We just happen to be promoting the use of an RV to do those things, because that is how we found we could do them.
So like Uncle Lone Thrift, we are proud to be peculiar. :)
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