Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge - Suffolk, VA

Friday September 19^th, we hiked in the Great Dismal Swamp. It’s a large swamp on the border of Virginia and North Carolina. It is located in parts of the southern Virginia independent cities of Chesapeake and Suffolk and northern North Carolina. Some estimates place the size of the original swamp at over one million acres, stretching from Norfolk, Virginia to Edenton, North Carolina.

In 1665, William Drummond, the first governor of North Carolina, was the first European recorded as discovering the swamp's lake, which was subsequently named for him. In 1728, William Byrd II, while leading a land survey to establish a boundary between the Virginia and North Carolina colonies, made many observations of the swamp, none of them favorable; he is credited with naming it the Dismal Swamp.

It was a short drive from where we are staying. We checked in at the Visitor's Center and then drove to the area we had planned to start hiking.

 We hiked the Washington Ditch where we heard and saw tons of Blackbirds. They turned out to be Common Grackles, but we had hoped they were a new bird for us. We also saw an American Redstart.

In 1763, George Washington visited the area, and he and others founded the Dismal Swamp Company in a venture to drain the swamp and clear it for settlement. The company later turned to the more profitable goal of timber harvesting.

We hiked all morning and didn't see a lot of birds, but did find a ton of mosquitos. It still was a great morning out in nature. We stopped and drove the short distance to downtown Suffolk for lunch.

 It really was fantastic BBQ - as it should be great smoke & great meat and home-made BBQ sauces in all flavors

 Pulled Pork

 Brisket, beans, macaroni & cheese and hush puppies

 downtown Suffolk

Mr. Peanut

After a great lunch we headed back to a different of the Dismal Swamp. 

On the drive to the Lake we saw 2 deer. The first one was a young one, but we only got a shot of it scurrying back into the woods. The second one I saw only because his antlers were going up and down in the deep grass and they caught my attention. He didn't seem to care or notice that we were watching him. 

 his nose was wet and shiny

it was some pretty deep grass

It was also Beaver territory, but we didn't see any. We continued on the road until we came to the lake. It really was a pretty lake and pretty large. No waterfowl to be seen though.

 Lake Drummond, a 3,100-acre natural lake, is located in the heart of the swamp. The lake, a remarkably circular body of water, is one of only two natural lakes in Virginia.

We drove back and stopped at the hiking trails and we did some birds here and there. 

 the ditch

 Downy Woodpecker

 Black and White Warbler

Hundreds of years ago, before the Civil War, the dangers of the swamp and its seeming impenetrability actually attracted people to it. The land was so untamed that horses and boats couldn’t enter, and the colonists who were filing into the region detested it. William Byrd II, a Virginia planter, called it “a miserable morass where nothing can inhabit.” But people did inhabit the swamp, including thousands of enslaved Africans and African Americans who escaped their captors and formed communities in the swamp.

The enslaved people who found refuge in the swamp came to be known as “maroons” (from the Spanish “cimarrón,” meaning wild or untamed). Unlike other runaways, some of whom headed to northern cities, maroons lived in the wilderness, often in difficult-to-reach places. They were determined to build their own self-ruled communities, with landscape and the forces of nature serving as a buffer between their new lives and the society that enslaved them. Over centuries, the swamp became home to thousands of self-sufficient maroons, and it also served as a stopping point for others who were fleeing North on the Underground Railroad.

It was a great day and we spent all day right up until dinner. Tomorrow, we are off to the Chrysler Museum of Art.