The Professor's Swamp

Saturday we were invited to visit the home of one of the school teachers. Professor Nildo lives near a big lake, and being a lowstate girl, I was just TOO excited at the possibility of finding a lake nearby. After about a trillion miles of rough dirt roads, we came to an area marked by large signs as a tourist center. It mapped out a picnic area, an island, a place for camping, and bike/boat rentals. Yippee!

I started in on stories of my childhood on Coon Island, and how cool Lake Moultrie is. We all got hyped up about renting a canoe and paddling out to this little island for the picnic we'd planned. The map showed just a little bit of land and a whole lot of water surrounding it, and from the "you are here" arrow, we seemed pretty close. The road dead-ended out of nowhere in a man's front yard, marked off by a cow fence. We found a handwritten "PARKING" sign with a price for motorcycles and a price for autos. Saul jumped out to ask for details. We were still looking for the lake. Surely it had to be close.

After talking with the man who came to the gate, Saul laughed a good bit and came back to the car to fill us in. As it turned out, we should have stopped at the first sign and paid the people at that house to enter further. Then we needed to pay to park, then we needed to pay to have access to the lake area. OH! Those woods in front of us ARE the lake? Apparently, the lake is bordered on one side by swamp land, and that happened to be the side we were on. So we decided not to pay to look at the swamp, as we'd just driven past miles and miles of it to get to the end of this road. (SIDENOTE: Have I ever told you that it took years for Ken to stop laughing about the title I had in my senior year of high school, "Miss Swamp Fox"? The fox happened to be our school mascot, and we lived in the middle of the Swamp Fox National Forest, hence the title. After all the talk about my childhood memories from Lake Moultrie, and then finding this to be a day at the swamp, the gears shifted quickly to lighthearted jabs about my memories of the swamp...)

We U-turned and stopped along the drive back to sip some terere and check out the cows wading through the muck and mire. I guess they were happy in light of all the drought we'd had, but watching them eat slimy vegetation and drink the water was pretty gross. We were told this is the area for crocodiles (a smaller version than you're imagining, but crocodiles nonetheless). Luckily for Bessie and her four-footed companions, the crocodiles didn't seem to be in the mood for beef that day.
Those tiny dots in the background are our cow friends.

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