Way Down Upon the Suwannee River

Do you know that Stephen Foster, the composer of  "Way Down Upon the Suwannee River", never saw the Suwannee River or even visited Florida? Yet it became the most popular song ever published to that time, selling hundreds of thousands of copies and launching Florida's tourism industry in the late 1800s. As a matter of fact, the song had such a powerful influence on the state that Florida's legislature adopted it as the official state song in 1935.

So we could not leave Florida without a visit to the famous river.

The Suwannee River National Wildlife Refuge was very close to where we stayed in Cedar Key so of we went. The refuge itself in quite wonderful with lots of opportunities to view the wild animals and birds. But our goal was to see the river.

There was a 1 mile trail to take through the hardwood forest to the river:

The trail was like a causeway through a swamp filled with beautiful wild flowers:

After about 1/2 mile there was no more dry land and the trail changed to a boardwalk:

A long boardwalk, about 1/2 mile more:

With plaques telling us about the cottonmouth snake and other wonderful creatures living in the water below. Before total panic set in we reached our goal:

So beautiful and so peaceful:

With a couple of pleasure boats further up river:

We were the only people there that day. An amazing experience a lot of today's visitors to Florida miss, I think.

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