But Wednesday I took the day off work and went kayaking with my friend Rayne and her friend Caimee, who was visiting from North Carolina. We went down the Santa Fe River. It was BEAUTIFUL!! It was cool and perfectly sunny, with a little breeze that was a wee bit chilly.
We saw:
--tons of turtles (of course)
--anhinga
--two red-shouldered hawks
--great blue herons
--little blue herons
--pileated woodpeckers
--white egrets
--limpkins
--kingfishers
--ducks
--a million vultures (creepy)
--one naked man
We even heard a few barred owls (around 4 o'clock)! I didn't see any algae, water lettuce, or water hyacinth to speak of, which is good. We saw two -- two!! -- canoes the entire time, two boats, and no swimmers -- just scuba divers in Ginnie Springs. The river was basically ours, for twelve entire miles!
I should explain the naked man.
There's a spring, called Lily Spring, that's privately owned. It's on a little side jaunt off the Santa Fe. You can see the kayaks we rented.
A nudist named Ed lives there.
He takes care of the property and hangs out with canoeists and kayakers. He's a nice guy.
Another person we met was Verniss (sp?), this very opinionated guy who runs Ichetucknee Canoe and Cabins. He cares a lot about the river.
They 'like' quotation marks "a lot" "there."
It was a perfect day. I'll post more photos as soon as Caimee e-mails me hers.
4 comments:
Nice to hear about your trip -- I was amused by the nudist man and the signs with tons of quotations. You got a lot of characters by that lake.
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It just about makes my skin crawl when I see signs with that many misused punctuation marks. I guess I'm a grammar snob.
Glad you had a great trip! And thatnks for sharing with those of us who were stuck working on that day.
God, I love canoing down the Santa Fe! I've made that same trip a dozen times! I remember encountering everything you just described!
I'm impressed with your ability to identify birds; I thought you were a writer? ;)
Yeah, the Santa Fe is definitely a North Florida classic.
EG, I'm really not very good at bird ID. I've been practicing, because it seems like something I should know!
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