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
I am sorry for the long hiatus. It has been a rough summer. First I was evicted from my mobile home park. No . . nothing I did wrong. It is called 'change of land use'. The owner of a mobile home park has the 'right' to evict all his tenants, because he has decided to sell his land for condo's, offices, or whatever. And all the families residing there are evicted for 'change of land use'. May a pox from Hell afflict all those involved in such a practice. Developers and investors caused over 200 families to be forced to uproot and move their homes, or worse, sell them for pennies so they could make more money. May God curse them.
Okay, enough of the rant. I am now living on the west side of town just off I-295, north on Blanding. It is not as bad as it sounds. I live in a very, very nice community . . Country Roads. Because of the hours I work, it only takes me a little over half an hour to get to, or get home from work. And we are talking about 25 miles from the University. And across the Buckman Bridge.
Dot and I had a couple of nice paddles between then and now, but because I was living with someone else during the move, I didn't have the access to a computer network like I did before. So I couldn't post any pictures of the two paddles we did in the meantime.
About three weeks ago, just after the move was made, Dot and I decided to go down to Guana for a paddle. Crap happens!
We went to Dot's place to pick up 'Big Red' where she had stayed during the move and drove down to Guana, Six Mile Landing, and got the boat unloaded and on the ramp. It was threatening rain, but we decided to 'go for it'. As I bent over to drag Big Red into the water, my 'back went out' on me. For anyone who has had back problems, I won't need to tell you of the excruciating pain it causes and the debilitating effect it has on a person. So, I was down for the count for the next couple weekends. This is the longest period I have had to endure a back problem.
Regardless, I decided that this past weekend we were going to go kayaking someplace. We decided to go to Okeefenokee Swamp up in Fargo, Georgia. Mostly because we like it there and more mostly because it has a nice boat ramp for getting the boat into the water. Fargo is on the western side of the Okeefenokee Swamp and is quite a long drive to get there . . about 2 hours. Dot was hoping there wouldn't be too many people there so we could have the place to ourselves. Well, she got her wish. Be careful of what you wish for. When we got there we saw there was only one truck in the parking lot. We went into the ranger station to check in . . and got the bad news. Only a mile and a half of the river was open due to: A:) Low Water and B:) Trees down blocking the path. Crap !!
The rangers told us there was a fish camp about 6 miles back down the road where we could put in at and paddle upstream then float back down. Well that sounded good to us since that is what Dot and I do quite often on the St. Mary's River. We got to the fish camp, put our $2 launch fee into the mailbox and went down to the river. On the way down, we saw that the yellow flies were out in force. Even worse, there were numerous horseflies. In hindsight we should have gotten a picture of one of them as it landed on a windshield wiper. Dot and I both agreed these had to be the biggest horseflies we had ever seen in our combined lives. Easily over 2 inches long and an inch and a half wide. We drove down to the river and Dot asked me what I wanted to do. Damn !! I WANTED to go kayaking. I told her if we got out of the truck there, we would be eaten alive . . bug spray and all. So I told her we would go back and drive over to the St. Mary's River for a paddle there. Dot readily agreed. We went back, retrieved our $2 and headed back to the main road . . which was still over 10 miles away. On the way back to the main road, I told Dot we would swing by the Suwannee River at the visitor center in Fargo and check it out. We saw that the water was really low, but it still appeared to be navigable, at least for a kayak. So we decided to put in there and paddle upstream.
I cannot tell you how happy we were to have made that decision. No . . we didn't see any gators as we had hoped to at Okeefenokee. But it definitely made the long drive worthwhile. Dot and I have a number 2 second favorite spot for kayaking on. As you know, the St. Mary's River is our top of the line favorite place to go. Now the Suwannee at Fargo is our second place favorite to go to. I am sure the following pictures and videos will convince all of you of that. This time I will put all of the still photos up front and have the videos follow them at the end. Both the stills and the videos equally portray the quiet beauty of the upper Suwannee River.
ENJOY !!!!
Here is one of our first photos on the Suwannee above Fargo, Ga.
This is now our second MOST favorite place to go. The Suwannee River is gorgeous, to say the least.
Just north of the put-in.
Here we are heading upriver. The cypress trees on this stretch of river are quite impressive . . as you will see. We are so glad we checked out the river at Fargo and didn't drive straight back to the St. Mary's River. When we saw the water was navigable at the visitors center and decided to 'go for it', neither of us was sure if we would be eaten alive by flying critters or if the river was even navigable further upstream. No .. we weren't eaten alive . . yes . . the water was indeed navigable. We did hit bottom with the paddles in quite a few areas, but there weren't any places where we had to get out of the boat to pull it through the shallows.
We saw a LOT of cypress trees on the way upriver. With the low water condition, most of the cypress trees were well above the water line.
Here is Dot taking a video while I am snapping photos.
Didn't I say it was gorgeous?
This is where we stopped to allow my back to straighten out for a bit. See? I told you it was beautiful.
While we were stopped and out walking around,
we saw these deer tracks. It looks like papa, mama, and baby were out getting a
drink.
Continuing upstream. This is REALLY a very pretty river. Very scenic.
It is not often I let a spider set on me. I hate the little bastards. But this guy was just as he appears . . yellow-green. Pretty different. Needless to say, I flicked him off into the water soon after taking his picture.
One could not want a more scenic place to visit.
There were a few of these sandbars that stretched partway across the river.
More of the scenery.
Some of the root systems on the trees were very impressive. The three on the right are ogeechee lime tree roots, the one of the far left is a cypress tree.
Dot had spotted a disturbance on the water on the left so we investigated. It turned out to be a waterlogged dragonfly. She 'saved' it by dipping her paddle under it and bringing it into the boat. We saw where one of its' wings had been 'clipped off'. It crawled onto her hand for this photo and to dry out. It soon flew off and landed on a small bush. Dot's good deed for the day! We both think dragonflies are pretty neat critters.
So this was our trip for the day. Needless to say, we both had a lot of fun and saw a lot of interesting sights.
We both hope you have enjoyed our outing as much as we have.
One of the many videos we took along the way.
Remember - To play the video, click on the 'white triangle' twice . . not a double click . . but - twice.
Do not click on the video display again or you will leave this webpage.