The Dismal Swamp was absolutely stunning! Its name is attributed to Colonel William Byrd II of Virginia, who is said to have visited it in 1728, and to have been nearly devoured by yellow flies, chiggers, and ticks. His description of the place as being “dismal” can hardly be faulted, under the circumstances.
The swamp consists of nearly 600 square miles that have been deeded to the Department of the Interior, and designated the “Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge”. It is literally teeming with wildlife. Although the swamp originally spread over approximately 2200 miles, thousands of acres have been cleared and drained for cultivation, reducing it to its present size. Fortunately, the remaining 600 square miles should continue to be preserved, unless the Department of the Interior gets other ideas…
A trip by boat through the swamp begins with a long dredged canal after you leave Elizabeth City. This, in and of itself, is serene and beautiful. Although we didn’t have a sparkling day for our trip, it wasn’t raining, so we considered ourselves lucky, and enjoyed the eerie calm.
After the dredged canal you come to a lock. The swamp is actually eight feet above the level of the surrounding land, (now isn’t that counterintuitive?) so you have to go up to get into it, and go down to get out of it. This is controlled at both ends by locks. The locks operate on a fixed schedule, so it’s prudent to try to time your arrival to coincide with the lock’s operating schedule. We were able to do that
The swamp itself (actually it’s not what I imagined a swamp would be: it’s had a canal dredged through it so that it is navigable, and is lined with trees so thick that it feels like you’re literally in the middle of nowhere – but you can often hear the not-too-distant highway in the background!) has water the color of strong tea, and the trees at this time of year are that amazing brilliant green of early spring. The big, fast powerboats don’t take this route, because it’s impossible (and illegal) to go fast because of the threat of snags and other organic debris that could wreak havoc with one’s propeller. Slow and careful is the game here. Which also gives you plenty of time to spy the birds and turtles and whatever other wildlife you are able.
In our case, we had fun especially with the birds. We saw several kinds of water birds, including Canada geese, mallards, green herons, great blue herons, and several I couldn’t identify. As we’d approach a bird, it would take off and fly ahead of us, perch, and then, as we approached its new location, repeat. Sort of like a squirrel does: instead of darting off to the side, away from the road, he scampers ahead of your car ON the road, so continues to be pursued by the car. So it was with the birds: instead of getting out of the way, or flying behind us, they just kept flying ahead of us, so that we would eventually catch up with them again. Poor guys, it was really somewhat comical. At some point, they all eventually did get out of the way.
The other wildlife we saw a lot was turtles. All sizes, resting on partially submerged logs and stumps. You had to look carefully to see them, because they were just about the exact color of their resting places. I have never seen so many turtles in the wild! And I must mention here the large numbers of butterflies we’ve seen throughout our trip thus far – all along the ICW we’ve seen butterflies flying from one side of the channel to the other across our boat. For some reason this has really surprised me. And on the swamp, there were again lots of them, and there was one certain kind of tree (bush?) in bloom (sort of a white, bottlebrush – type flower) that seemed to attract them. When I got a closer look with binoculars, especially in a sunny spot, there were many butterflies congregated on these plants.
We visited the North Carolina Visitor’s Center, which has a free dock where you can tie up, and also is a highway rest stop and Visitor’s Center, so gets “traffic” from both sides! It’s beautifully maintained, well-run (even to having brand new, free loaner bikes for those who wish to go somewhat afield to explore), and has lots of information about the swamp and nearby attractions. Many people tie up there for the night, but we pushed on to another free dock close to the second lock.
This dock was right next to a Mexican restaurant, complete with loud music, so, in the spirit of “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” we had Mexican food for dinner! We were eventually joined by 2 more power boats and 3 sailboats. This made things interesting, since there was really only room for one boat to tie up! We pulled forward as far as we could to make room for the power boat behind us, and the 3 sailboats rafted to him. The other power boat was tied up to something, I’m not sure what, in front of us. All this transpired in our absence while we had walked across the street to the Food Lion to do some grocery shopping. We were quite surprised to come back and find ourselves surrounded!
The next morning we exited the swamp – that lock tender was the most personable so far. A great and cheerful guy who collects shells from people coming through his lock, which he then displays in his little garden. He even serenaded us by “playing” a conch shell! We traveled the short distance to Portsmouth (about 8 miles) and got Mer Sea settled into her berth. Now we’re waiting for the completion of our engine maintenance and expecting that that will coincide with a positive change in the weather (it’s already better today). Tomorrow we expect to head into the Chesapeake.