Off The Beaten Path

Before we decided to bring other people to the Blue Hole, we had to try and find it. Even though we had been there before, it's still hard to remember exactly where the spot is (next time we'll bring the GPS). Everything in shallow Snake Creek looks the same, and these backwaters are aptly named.



Many of the branches of the creek snake around and lead to dead ends, making it easy to get lost. Plus you never know what you are going to find. It really made us wonder what happened to this huge burned boat, and how it got back in the shallows.




It took awhile, but finally we just about fell over (or into) the Blue Hole. There are two main entrances/exits into Snake Creek, and doesn't it figure that the blue hole is almost at the beginning of the southern entrance, and we had started at the northern part.


However, the northern entrance is much more interesting. There is a cut that you enter that is about 40 feet deep, and the current races through it. We came across several spotted eagle rays and a crevice that looked like a boiling spring.





Another feature of this area is its history. Owens-Illinois made Snake Cay a base for its lumbering operation back around 1960. We found one of their old abandoned sawmill barges back in a branch of Snake Creek, in the late 1980's. It was mostly intact back then, but it is now rusting away. The two gigantic generator motors are still inside though.




A very interesting aspect of the lumbering operation was the fact that the company brought in the side-wheel steamship, Robert Fulton to not only be the worker's housing, but it was set up to have all the amenities of a city! The ironic thing is that the Robert Fulton originally plied the waters of the Hudson River between New York City and Albany, up near we live during the summer. What is also amazing is that once it was at the Snake Cay wharf, they filled in earth around it, making it landlocked. Click HERE for a must read article written by Dave Gale for Abaco Life Magazine. It's a great story about Snake Cay and life on board the Robert Fulton.

It's hard to believe that any large vessel can get close to the old seawall now, but the water sure is clear. We sure do like exploring off the beaten path!