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!

This is a mini-update I suppose. --Not really a long blog entry, but too much for a twitter.

I've been tired and sluggish all day. And I would have been more productive if I'd sat around and done nothing all day.

The day wasn't without big events though. I purchased the materials for my fence today with Dawn. I'm guessing there will be another few hundred to put in the gates, but I spent about $5000 to completely fence the back yard.

By this time next week, or sooner hopefully, I'll have a finished fence.

It's a ton of money that I really didn't want to spend. But I can now more or less quit worry about my neighbor now, and more importantly, can really start to enjoy the backyard. And to have something off my mind that has been weighing down on me since I first about the house five years ago, is quite nice.

As for yesterday, we had tons of fun kayaking. It wasn't as hot as our previous trip and there are plenty of good pictures. We can across an alligator that I named "Fear of God." Usually I err on the side of "too close" when I'm taking pictures of gators. Not this guy. I was hugging the bank of on the other side of the river and holding my breath the whole time. Dawn guesses that he was easily 12 foot. And he may well have been more. He was definitely bigger than our kayaks.

The pictures don't really do him justice, except if you zoom into his jawline -- which is huge and fat for lack of a better description. Usually gators are what I would describe as "lean and mean," even when they're big. This guy looked like he just sat around on the shore and ate whole trees.

Speaking of pictures, I'll post a few once I'm done going through them. Eventually, I'm going to have to resurrect my personal Flickr gallery or start using a wider Blogger template for the pictures though. They don't look very good "all smooshed up."

Dawn and I had a really nice time on the Little Manatee River yesterday, although it was hot. I mean, it was really, really hot. Florida in July. No breeze. And no canopy for the most part. One thing that saved us from the heat a little was a big storm that rolled in toward the end of our trip. So we did have some nice clouds for the last hour or so.

The Little Manatee river has a pretty good flow to it also, so you really don't even have to paddle. We took both cars, so we just floated down river and enjoyed the scenery. Not much of a workout! But after Dawn's last month, I don't think she needs a work out.

Little Manatee is quite different from what Dawn and I have seen so far. The river banks, especially where we put in, are very high. In that respect, it almost didn't seem like Florida. And the other thing that was different was the reddish tint to much of the water -- especially where it was shallow and the sun was shining openly. The red contrast to the green foliage was quite nice, and I found myself wishing that I'd brought a wide angle lens to capture it.

Speaking of pictures, a hot summer day at noon really isn't the best time to look for nature pictures. For one thing, the wildlife tends to be most active in the morning and in the evening when it's cooler. Second, the bright sun can make some bird shots just impossible -- the bright feathers "blow out," and there isn't anything to you can do. And of course, the bright, contrasty sunlight doesn't make for great pictures in general.

We found a couple families of turtles in the shade, however. I've seen plenty of turtles sunning themselves, but I've never seen a whole group like we saw yesterday.



I felt bad taking their picture, because we ended up scaring just about everything we came across. (Not supposed to do that.) But I don't think we could have gotten around most of them at all without scaring them. The wildlife on this river was generally much more cautious that what we've encountered in the past. You can really tell that the Little Manatee doesn't get as much "traffic" as other rivers.



Dawn caught sight of this flower fairy. I think that's what you call them. She was really busy with this flower, like a little hairstylist with wings.



Tack-sharp at 600mm from a moving Kayak. Baby.



Of course, we saw a few gators as always. Like everything else, they were very shy and usually got in the water well before we were passing. Towards the very end of our trip however, we came across a little guy that was really interesting in that he was covered in dirt and weeds. Usually the alligators are pretty clean when they're sunning themselves, but the water around this guy wasn't exactly clear.



I'm posting a crop to better show what I'm taking about; a small jpg on Blogger really doesn't do it justice. Later Dawn was doing young alligator-impersonations: "Mom says I should clean better than I do. But she's not here right now, and I'm tired..."



Back to work for me! Dawn just called and she's on the way home with Carly. Have to get the guest room ready and there is furniture to be moved.

Dawn got back from training last night and I’m happy, happy, happy. And she has a four day weekend to recuperate before reporting for duty on Monday.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get anyone to swap my on-call shift this week, so I haven’t had the uninterrupted time with her that I was hoping for. Since my weekend is essentially up in the air, I’m taking most of tomorrow off (during the day at least) and we’re going to go kayaking. There are a ton of places just to the south of us where we’ve never gone, so we’ll try something new.

I’m still debating whether or not I’ll take a camera. Whenever I don’t take a camera, I always regret it strongly. On the other hand, lugging a SLR and telephoto lens on the kayak and keeping it dry the whole time can be a challenge.

At some point Saturday we’re going to pick up Carly for the night. And I believe we have a family beach outing scheduled for Sunday morning/day. However, the new X-Files movie comes out Friday, so at some point there will be a family movie day too. I’m not sure how that schedule will end up, but I’ll just be hoping my pager stays silent. If not, I’ll have the laptop I suppose.

Dawn and I did some shopping today and I used the opportunity to pickup Haze. (Actually, I saw it on the shelf and went, “Ooo! Ooo! Ooo!”) Sadly, I won’t have the chance to play for another day or so – and I’m long overdue to get back in Age of Conan. But maybe Carly will want to play when she comes over...

(I just can’t get Dawn into video games, though she admits to having fun playing Heavenly Sword.)

And in other news, I got a letter from SunTrust saying that due to the decline in the housing market they’ve reduced my HELOC limit from 60k to 41k. I don’t need the credit, but I’m a little peeved because paying down that loan, while maintaining the line, is good for my credit score. Now it’s going to look like I have a nearly maxed out credit line.

Doesn’t matter though, I’ll have it paid off in a couple more years with the schedule Dawn has been on. --And then they can kiss their interest goodbye. I know they’re just covering themselves in this economy, but I’ll think twice before getting my next loan through them.

I miss kayaking. With Dawn away training, the kayaks are leaning up against the house looking sad and dirty, covered in leaves.

Since we live on the Hillsborough river (one street way to be more accurate), this photography is pretty much in our backyard. To be fair, I think you need to go a little north from where we are to really get this sort of stuff -- but not as far as you might think. We put in right off of Fowler by the university, and it was gorgeous. And we do have a little park tucked away in the neighborhood that lets you walk along the river for quite a way. --A hidden gem in the neighborhood!

Not too long ago we went kayaking along the Rainbow river. I'll tell you what, if you wanted to buy a nice house in Florida, something along the upper part of that river would be amazing. Nice big Key West style houses (among others), and beautiful views.

I've dissed Florida for a long time, but if you're a photographer it's a pretty amazing place. We have a few big "photo destinations" right here and you can shoot year round. Not too shabby.

You just have to get away from all these damn strip malls and such. When I drive from Mom's house to Tom's house in the GA mountains I'm blown away by the beauty. I want to stop a dozen time along the way. I get none of that inspiration driving around down here. But if you get off the beaten path, or better yet, onto a river, it's pretty darn nice.