Weeki Wachee River

Well, I've been just terrible about updating the blog lately. I blame that partly on being extraordinarily busy, though too, there is a healthy dose of "lazy" that just can't be discounted.

Dawn is back from her trip and we wasted no time cleaning off the kayaks and floating down one of the many thousand beautiful rivers in Florida. This time we chose the Weeki Wachee River.



We put in at Weeki Wachee springs, and you just can't imagine how many springs we floated over. Dawn kept calling them out as we passed, but eventually just gave up as the day went on.

The water is stunningly clear and cool when you first put in. And actually, it's cool and clear for the vast majority of the trip, until you get much closer to the Gulf. We didn't even clear the kayaks when we got home. Quite a contrast from rivers that are more like the Everglades, where you feel like you're paddling around in primordial bioluminescent ooze.

We didn't see nearly as much wildlife as we usually do, but what we did see was striking. We weren't in the water for even a minute before we got our first surprise -- a bald eagle. It's hard to shoot 600mm in a moving kayak, but a got a picture for the scrap book anyway.



Same caveat on this next picture. The river moves along fairly fast, enough that even our little anchor wasn't holding in some places. I was hoping for a better picture of this hawk, but you get what you get sometimes.



Last but not least we saw a river otter swimming upstream as we were pulling our kayaks out. I regret not ripping the camera gear out of my pack and running after it, but it was hot and I was pretty exhausted. --We'd been in for about four hours, and did some honest paddling for the last leg of the trip.

It feels good to be back in the water!