Two joined me for a paddle of the Wakulla River on Sunday. Fred Borg came over from Panama City, and we were joined by Doug Alderson, who is Florida’s Paddling Trails Coordinator for the Florida Office of Greenways and Trails. Doug is a talented and engaging writer with eight books to his credit as a naturalist, as well as dozens of magazine articles for a wide range of publications. Doug has been a great resource for support and information since we started researching the Florida Coasts, and it was great to have the opportunity to meet and paddle with him. See dougalderson.net. We had found one of Doug’s books, Waters Less Traveled: Exploring Florida’s Big Bend Coast, so besides getting information about a part of the coast of obvious interest to us, we were able to have him autograph it for us.
Doug Alderson
We started with a vehicle shuttle, and put in at the North Bridge, which is also where a large fence shuts off the river to prevent water access to Wakulla Springs State Park. That gave us the current to ride all the way south to the junction with the St. Mark’s River at the city of St. Mark’s. The weather was bad yesterday, and beautiful today, plus it was a Sunday, so as I told Fred, we can say we enjoyed the beautiful river, and so did the other 300 people we met. There is a canoe livery at the US Rt. 98 (Coastal Highway) bridge, and all the rented canoes have to paddle north, so once we passed the bridge, the crowd thinned out to almost nothing. The total distance was 6.7 miles. It was just a nice, leisurely day on the water.
Fred (left) and Doug on the Wakulla
Home of the Keebler elves. Taken at site of the
Battle of Natural Bridge.
No comments:
Post a Comment