It looks like it should be, but it is not, pronounced like Bag-o-Cheetohs. Based on questioning locals, “Bogue” rhymes with “yoga”, “Chit” has a “Ch” like “Cheese, “Chit” rhymes with “hit”, and “to” rhymes with “toe”. The pronunciation is something like “Bow-guh Chit-toe”.

The park is located beside the Bogue Chitto River. It has a driving loop a little more than 4 miles long with two camping loops – Upland and Bottomland. (Want to guess which one is in a flood plain?) It also has miles of hiking, mountain biking, and horse riding trails. The park has many small ponds stocked for fishing. It also has a little store and a disc golf course.

The ponds draw a lot of fishermen (fisher-people?), birds, and animals, so we drove the loop to see all the available activities.

Before we left, a Downy Woodpecker showed up at our camp site. We have seen these multiple times per year, but they always seem to be hundreds of feet away. This one was only about 20 to 30 feet away. They look very similar to Hairy Woodpeckers. The Downy Woodpecker has a shorter beak, and it has black marks on the white edge tail feathers.

Kate really wanted to see an alligator, and the lady at the camp store said there might be some at the first pond. The first pond was the Interpretive Area. There was a Great Blue Heron stalking the far shore that flew to a branch pile closer to us.

And Kate found, not one, but two alligators. We think they were no more than four to six feet long. They did not seem like a threat to an adult, and they were on the far side of the pond. The last two pictures are cropped to make the alligator more visible.

After a while, we continued around the loop to Bottomland camp loop. At this loop, we saw an Anhinga. She was on the shore near us, but she fly to the other side of the pond as the camera came out.

Further around the loop is a large day use area. There area has multiple fishing ponds, multiple picnic pavilions, a large playground, and a water sprayer play area. There were more people here than other areas, so the only thing we saw were turtles. We are not sure on the type of turtle. The color is similar to a Red-eared Slider, but it has a big head and ridge on the back of the shell. It might be some type of Map Turtle.

After this, we went home. When we got back, we saw a brilliant red Northern Cardinal foraging in the woods near the RV.