The Real Swamp...Finally

We've lived on the edge of The Great Swamp for two months.

The word "swamp" conjures up many images.  Most of which come from watching too much Scooby Doo.

On a rainy-ish Sunday afternoon we went to explore the swamp.  The Great Swamp was only footsteps away from us and we really needed to know what we were dealing with here.

Exploring meant going around a locked gate.  I say around because the gate is locked but you can just take a step over a very short wall and be on the path to swamp land.

We felt adventurous with the whole locked gate thing.

We brought the dog for protection?

Jenna had been exploring on a different occasion and when we passed this area she said,
"There it is.  There's The Great Swamp." 

We kept walking because I was going to be really disappointed if that was the swamp.  The swamp had to be bigger than a little pool of water.  After all, on the real entrance side to the swamp they have a sign that looks like this:

We kept walking with great anticipation of what we would find at the swampy site.

We made it to the swamp and this is what we found.

There really was a swamp. 

The Great Swamp is actually a National Wildlife Refuge.  And we saw evidence of that with some wildlife swimming around in the water.  Swampy water.

To take these pictures we, and when I say "we" I mean the kids, needed to climb up a compost pile.

The swamp lay just beyond the mulch pile.  How interesting.

During the week people can drive over to this side of the swamp and drop of recycling and pick up any mulch they may need.  How interesting.

Feeling somewhat accomplished for discovering the swamp, we headed home through the locked gate leaving the mulch where we had found it.

On a different day the kids and I went to the real entrance and took a hike through the refuge.

It was very pretty and very un-swamp like but we felt like we had truly explored every facet of the swamp land.