Hey Y'all . . . Welcome to my Website
Courtesy of the University of North Florida
and Jack Woodward
Here is the link for the University of North Florida.
Hey Y'all
This past Saturday, Dot and I went up to the St. Mary's River to our favorite spot, Stokes Bridge. We paddled upstream first for about 3 miles or so since we only took my truck with us. At that point we had lunch and then had an easy trip downstream. Our speed downstream was about 2 1/2 mph which means our upstream paddle was a little bit strenuous. Which wasn't all bad since it was a bit chilly on Saturday so the heavy paddling helped to keep us warm. But we both got to a point later in the day where we were down to T-shirts. It was also quite windy, but being down 'in' the river channel we weren't affected by the wind too badly. But admittedly, we did have to put our flannel shirts back on for the downstream run. Since we weren't working so hard, and the wind had picked up substantially, we had to keep ourselves warm. We did have one memorable sight. I happened to be looking behind us and saw a big bird approaching. As it got closer to us, I recognized it as an American Bald Eagle. It flew directly over our heads. Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of it. It flew upstream ahead of us and we slowly paddled upstream scanning all the trees for this magnificent bird. Sadly, we never saw it again. But he was a big one. A wingspan of 4 feet easily.
This first photo is on the way up to the put-in. Dot spotted these Longhorn cattle way off to one side of the road. So I turned around and we went back to get some pictures. The horns on the white steer had to be at LEAST 6 feet across at the 'elbow', quite probably seven feet. Which means the total length of the horns was probably 12 to 13 feet tip to tip. Truly impressive!
In the pasture next to the steers was this beautiful horse. This was taken with the telephoto as he approached us, but he finally did come up to the fence line for a nose rub.
On the St. Mary's River heading upstream. As you can see we really did have a beautiful day on the river. Clear blue sky, plenty of sunshine, and the 'greens' of spring in the trees. As I said the water flow was fairly substantial. The height was around 5 1/2 feet at the water gauge just north of Macclenny. Which really has nothing to do with the water depth anywhere else on the river. It's just an indicator of general water depth. We know that anything above 3 feet means we won't have to get out and pull the boat through the shallows. There were still numerous places where our paddles 'hit bottom'. And a couple of places where we could have walked across the river.
Pretty neat root system. I'm fairly sure this is a ogeechee lime tree. I know if I'm wrong, our campus horticulturist Chuck Hubbuch will correct me. (He did correct me.)
I'm sure all of you have noticed the change in the appearance of our campus. I always thought it was a really nice green campus before Chuck got here. Now . . I am really amazed at the difference in appearance. Personally my hat is off to Chuck Hubbuch. We have all been 'blessed' having Chuck here. Like I said, the campus was pretty before . . now it is beautiful! Good job Chuck !!
As we were taking pictures here, I told Dot this would probably be the picture of the day. As you can see there are still a great many trees and submerged logs to deal with on this stretch of the river. A couple of times, we got 'lifted' out of the water from an unseen submerged log as we passed over it. Those are really cheap thrills. But we have learned to 'stay loose', and we have learned to maintain our balance. Crucial when one is carrying all the camera stuff we have with us. I've got to figure out a way to get some of our videos up on a website like Veoh or YouTube and add the links to this webpage. The 'problem' is videos use up a LOT of MEGABYTES of file storage. I'll figure that out one day. Oftentimes when Dot and I get together, we go back and watch some of the videos we have taken and it really is like 'being there' all over again.
I like this photo for the contrast between green leaves and blue sky.
The downed trees really do add to the beauty of this part of the river.
As you can imagine, we have to wend and weave our way through spots like this. And with the current 'in our face', the task does become daunting at times.
We took a little walk back to the 'hidden pond' we know about. This old stump is near that pond. I didn't get any photos from the pond since we were both taking videos at the time. Darn it! There are some cypress knees back there that tower over Dot and are even a few inches higher than me. And at their base they are less than 9 or so inches across. VERY tall and VERY skinny. Chuck says he hasn't ever seen cypress knees like them before.
First time at embedding a video. We'll see how this goes. Click twice on the 'triangle'.