manatee stayed with us, rubbing the bottom of our boat and letting us pet him. Great fun! We then headed north on the St. Johns River. It was a beautiful warm sunny day, but alligators were scarce. We saw a few small ones, but no big ones. After about an hour we arrived at Hontoon Island State Park. HISP is accessible only by boat, but is not as remote as I expected, since it is only 100 yards across the St. Johns River to a major marina and resort. We talked to a ranger there who explained that most of the big gators had been killed during a recent hunt, where the state had increased the number of licenses issued. We lunched at HISP and decided to return by an alternate route. We turned south down the Hontoon Dead River and then cut back to the St. Johns via Snake Creek. This route had less motor boats and we did see a few more gators. We had a great all-day paddle of about 9 miles.
Monday, February 4, 2008
Paddle: St. Johns R., Hontoon Dead R, and Snake Ck.
We put in at the mouth of Blue Spring for a paddle down the St. Johns River. We could see about a dozen manatees at the lower end of the spring, so before leaving the spring we played for a while with the manatees. One young 
manatee stayed with us, rubbing the bottom of our boat and letting us pet him. Great fun! We then headed north on the St. Johns River. It was a beautiful warm sunny day, but alligators were scarce. We saw a few small ones, but no big ones. After about an hour we arrived at Hontoon Island State Park. HISP is accessible only by boat, but is not as remote as I expected, since it is only 100 yards across the St. Johns River to a major marina and resort. We talked to a ranger there who explained that most of the big gators had been killed during a recent hunt, where the state had increased the number of licenses issued. We lunched at HISP and decided to return by an alternate route. We turned south down the Hontoon Dead River and then cut back to the St. Johns via Snake Creek. This route had less motor boats and we did see a few more gators. We had a great all-day paddle of about 9 miles.
manatee stayed with us, rubbing the bottom of our boat and letting us pet him. Great fun! We then headed north on the St. Johns River. It was a beautiful warm sunny day, but alligators were scarce. We saw a few small ones, but no big ones. After about an hour we arrived at Hontoon Island State Park. HISP is accessible only by boat, but is not as remote as I expected, since it is only 100 yards across the St. Johns River to a major marina and resort. We talked to a ranger there who explained that most of the big gators had been killed during a recent hunt, where the state had increased the number of licenses issued. We lunched at HISP and decided to return by an alternate route. We turned south down the Hontoon Dead River and then cut back to the St. Johns via Snake Creek. This route had less motor boats and we did see a few more gators. We had a great all-day paddle of about 9 miles.
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