The Great Dismal Swamp Wildlife Refuge 2-21-17

On this Tuesday we traveled to Suffolk to hike the Rail Road Ditch down to Lake Drummond. We had 29 people and one dog to make the 7 miles to the lake. At the lake we station 5 vehicles to care everyone back to the refuge office. We drove down about 9:00 AM and at the lake all the drivers loaded into my truck and I drove them back to the office where we met up with the others. We had our talk about today’s trip and everyone stated their name. With all the talking done we headed out about 9:45 and reach our first stop about 10:30. Here some took off a layer of clothing and had a drink of water, it was already getting warmer. There is a side board walk that goes about 100 yards into the swamp and we checked it out. It looks like when finished that it will connect back to the main trail and be about 200 yards long. Mr. Bear had already chewed on some of the 4X4’s letting (Ellis) know that there are “Bears in these here woods”. Back on the main trail we headed south for our second leg of a three leg hike. Here we spotted some scat but it wasn’t bear, only Coyote, we hiked on. We had another stop at the corner of West Ditch and Interior Ditch, here we turn and headed east and it was only 1.89 miles to the lake, said Bill B. GPS, we had about a 10 minute break here and some took off their zip off legs because it was getting hot by now. Everyone pigged out on their snacks and water before we left here. It was 11:30 by the time we started hiking again and we were right on time. Reaching Lake Drummond the wind was calm and the lake was beautiful, on the east side there were about 50 Swans resting for their long trip back north in a few weeks. We were here about 20 minutes and then everyone loaded into the 5 vehicles and we drove back to the office. After we got back to our own cars 25 drove to Amici’s Pizza, there in Suffolk and everyone had a great meal. This was another great outing for our Tuesday Group and if you missed it, try to be with us next week for another one! Bruce

Bill Billings has shared a picture album with us. Click on the link to view: https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipNR2Zl68Ad4V-l9q_znrSTmZvFjJAFVN5wEs-0SbsV3EE_Dk877yjDifguz0sPi-g?key=WkozeHlaaHh3djdiMmJqVGgyczVnM3FxeGcybWdB