Okefenokee Swamp in the winter

Our latest trip to Okefenokee Swamp was the week after Christmas. It started out a little chilly. I had never seen the water with ice in it! Luckily it wasn't everywhere and we were still able to take a boat ride. Blankets on board, and eventually the sun, kept us warm.
We were a little worried about not seeing much wildlife because of the chilly temps. But, it was too cold for the alligators to digest their food, so they weren't out hunting. And the other animals knew it! I saw more animals than I've ever seen at the swamp. Unlike this Great Blue Heron, most of them were too quick to get a photo of. We saw an otter eating a fish, quite a few raccoons (including a mom and babies up in a tree eating berries), kingfishers, grebes, pileated woodpecker and other birds. Most exciting was a bobcat that one of the kids in our group spotted (no one believed him until we saw it ourselves!). And, believe it or not, we saw Snipes! A snipe is very rare bird to spot in the wild, and we saw quite a few of them!

The water level was so low in the swamp that we were able to get off the boat and run around on the peat, which is usually underwater. We learned that running around out there probably wasn't the best idea, though, because....

you never know when an alligator will be there! The boys were playing and all of the sudden we realized there was a7-8 foot long alligator that they didn't even notice at first. Luckily, they saw it before tripping over it!
We also saw this bear track!

After lunch, we saw these alligators in the duckweed right where the boats are docked.

Hellloooo up there! We drove around the wildlife drive and then walked the mile-long boardwalk to get to this observatory tower overlooking a lake. It was a great trip with a great family. Thank you Colemans!