exploring off the river

I saw several rivers and creeks on the chart that go nowhere, but look like they might be interesting. A lot of them are connected. I picked an opening little north of Hontoon and we started up it. The whole place is a National Wildlife Refuge. We made our way up through places so tight that we could touch the trees on both sides of the boat. The VHF antenna collected spanish moss on it. We traveled through places a larger boat wouldn't dare try. Some streams were less than 3' deep, and more than once I looked out my side door at submerged logs that we missed hitting by dumb luck.
When we finally came to a place we could go no futher, we were about 15 miles off the St Johns. As much of a wilderness as you'll find in Florida. We were on, or very close to places named Mud Lake, Shell Creek, Daisy Lake, Highland Canal, Zeigler Dead River, Blue Peter Lake, Norris Dead River, Gator Lake, Scoggin Lake, & Lake Woodruff.
On the way in, we passed some sort of compound with an interesting statue. I'm sure I've seen that figure somewhere before. Perhaps on another planet.
As you might imagine, alligators were everywhere. I was going to say they are ubiquitous, but I can't spell that.
We also saw these two spooners.
We're anchored in another oxbow tonight. As I was dropping the anchor, two 10' gators circled the boat. They're already croaking back and forth. My "gatorese" is a little rusty, but I think they're daring each other to try to climb our anchor line.