Audrey rode with us in our car to the river bridge at SR 664A near Bowling Green and at Paynes Creek Historic State Park. We put in there, then Dave and Audrey returned our car to the campground, where we would take out. We were pretty comfortable letting them drive our car since they were the original owners of that car and put the first 60,000 miles on it. Dorcas and I had a very relaxing and enjoyable paddle of about 10 miles. The temperature was in the low 80s and the sky was clear. The river is very low. It was running about 41 cfs at Zolfo Springs, while the median flow there is over 200 cfs. Although we scraped bottom a few times, we had no real difficulty. We saw only a few other folks on the river, mostly folks fishing or looking for fossils. It was surprising to see so few people out on this gorgeous Sunday 
afternoon. We saw abundant wildlife including turtles, a river otter, a deer, and an alligator. Bird sightings included ibis, great blue herons, limpkins, little blue herons, red shouldered hawks, red tailed hawks, kingfishers, anhingas, and wood ducks. The real treat however were the numerous fish sightings, seen easily in the shallow clear water. We saw alligator gar, catfish, bass, tilapia, mullet and snook. Most amazing were suckers that carpeted the bottom of the river. They layed on the bottom of the river in schools of hundreds and didn't move as we drifted over.The most surprising sighting, however, was near the end of the run when we saw some folks fishing in kayaks. We looked a them; they looked at us; and soon we realized we knew each other. It was Bob from Michigan and Brooksville FL and John and Cindy from Tampa, who we had paddled with during a Central Florida Paddlemasters Week of Rivers a year or two ago near Milton FL on the panhandle. As the cliche goes, it's a small world. We just keep running into folks we know on this trip!.
No comments:
Post a Comment