See you later. . . .
By Bianca Dumas
September/October 2026
When you do a lot of RV travel, you need to get creative. After many years on the road, we’d been to theme parks, art museums, natural science centers, living history museums, farms specializing in one animal or another, and about 10 of the self-proclaimed “Coolest Small Towns in America.” It seemed that we’d done it all, but the whole family had never immersed itself, so to speak, in an alligator swamp. I figured it was time. Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge near Folkston, Georgia, was right off Interstate 95 on our route from North Carolina to Florida, waiting for us to dip our paddles in its black waters.
As we drove, I told the kids that the Okefenokee Swamp is partially man-made. In the late 1800s, the Suwanee Canal Company attempted to drain the natural lowlands for farming. Instead, water came rushing into their 12-mile drainage canal, making the swamp bigger than before. Today the canal is part of a 120-mile network of paddle trails, and our family was going to explore one little corner of it.
My husband and daughter have similar personalities, and to save everyone’s frustration, they shared the two-person canoe. They were almost immediately ahead with their one-two-three count of perfect precision paddling. My son and I, also with matching personalities, paddled individual kayaks. We were sometimes in unison, sometimes with one of us floating backward, shouting over one another to point out huge butterflies, funny-looking turtles, and everywhere, alligators.
Eventually, the long, straight path of the Historic Suwanee Canal developed variation. The vegetation on the banks grew taller, and we found ourselves in a grove of live oak trees, limbs dripping with Spanish moss. This was the kind of swamp adventure I’d been hoping for.
We entered a natural tunnel, ducking as we paddled under low limbs, reflexively brushing imaginary bats and spiders off our hats. We soon saw a camping platform taken over by an especially girthy lizard who glared at us from under his slitted eyelids.
Once out of the shadows, we were in the Mizell Prairie, and the gentle sun was making wheat-colored grasses glow golden among the lily pads. This part of the paddle trail was wide; the route cut through the grass, and the shore was far away. The alligators must have been hiding under the wax myrtles on the bank.
At this point, my husband noticed that the sun was getting lower in the sky, dusk being the time that most animals begin to feed, and he told us we ought to make our way back to the boat ramp. We returned the way we came, paddling through the gothic landscape of live oak trees and hoot owls, back up the canal. To my delight, there were even more alligators than before, lining the canal bank on both sides like townspeople coming out to see a parade.
As my husband and daughter were paddling toward the boat ramp at high speed, I slowed down to look at a particular gator on my port side. Something about him was both compelling and unnerving, and my son drifted next to me. We stared at the alligator together.
It’s bad manners to stare, and this alligator must have felt uncomfortable. He dived into the water toward us. The action set off an equal and opposite reaction in my son, who took off like a man captaining a cigarette boat in an offshore race. He paddled the quarter mile back to the visitor’s center so fast, he left a . My husband later told me that he drove the kayak up the boat ramp and all the way onto the concrete, put both hands on the rim of the recessed opening, launched himself out of the boat and started running, all in one motion.
My husband called after him, “Where is your mother?”
The kid said I was back there somewhere.
Back there I was. After he dived, the alligator swam the width of the canal underwater, and climbed the bank on the other side. He had been utterly nonplussed at my juicy looking lifejacketed torso, and I arrived contentedly at the boat launch as the sun set.
When we were settled in central Florida a few weeks later, I told the kids I’d heard about a 13-foot Godzilla gator lumbering around the Circle B Bar nature preserve in Lakeland and thought we should see it. At that announcement, they sat down on the slim RV sofa, one on either side of me, like you do when you’re about to deliver someone some very bad news.
“Mom,” my son began, wrapping his arm around my shoulders. He gave his sister a meaningful look, and she delivered the blow.
“We’re done with nature preserves,” she said, continuing with an obviously long-contemplated list. “And living history museums. And natural science centers. And farms of every kind.” Not content with the initial blow, she continued. “We have pet their animals and worn clothing made from their wool and tasted their milk. And now we are finished.”
How could they turn on me so, these children I had raised on plant identification books and insect collections? But they were teenagers now, ready to steer their own course through the murky waters of life.
“Most of all,” my son said in a voice that was kind but very firm, “we’re done with alligators.”