Suwannee River Trip, March 29 - 31
Photo: Sam the dog.
We rent our kayaks from an outpost near the small town of Live Oak in northern Florida. The outpost based at a campground for the Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park. The outpost isn't associated with the park, but they share the same space. We arrived late in the evening and camped our first night at the outpost.
The next morning, we arranged for our kayaks and identified what part of the river we wished to go down. We put in roughly 50 miles to the east at a place called Cone Bridge. Two years ago, on almost the exact same weekend, Tanjariitta traveled down the same stretch of river by herself. We decided that we would take the same trip so she could show me the beautiful things she had seen the last time she was there.
The Suwannee River is a federally designated wild river and today is the only major waterway in the southeastern United States that is still unspoiled. All along the river dot parks, springs and walking paths so the river can be hiked as well as paddled. The river flows from the great Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia 266 miles to the Gulf of Mexico. The unusual deep red color of the water is derived from tannic acid from tree roots, oak leaves and peat. In fact, watching Tanjariitta’s bright yellow paddle completely vanish eight inches below the surface was a neat trick. The river is so dark as to be ominous both day and night.
The first day was pretty laid back, we took our time meandering about the river. We rented two kayaks, a single and a tandem. I took the tandem. We like having the extra room a tandem has because we can put a few extra items of gear in it that we wouldn't normally have if we went backpacking - like comfortable sleeping gear and extra food. The rented kayaks are nice, but they do define the expression "mental-rental." I dubbed my ship the "Sideways Bertha." Mind of her own and sideways down the river was her favorite means of travel!
The temperature of the day didn’t much go above eighty degrees and the sky remained hazy. Weather in March and April is always the best for any outdoor activities in northern Florida. The days are respectively warm and the nights not too cool. In fact, it was the 34th day in a row with that kind of weather, not hard to take, but with the sacrifice of no rain.
In fact, the river itself was pretty low, by as much as ten feet in some areas. It was as if the shore was afraid of the water. It looked as it someone had pulled the banks of the river up like a person hiking their pants up before wading into water to keep them from getting wet.
The area was about to break into Spring. Many of the trees were completely barren and at first glance gave the appearance of being dead, but on closer inspection, they were only just about to bud and bear their leaves. A few more pleasant days like this one and Spring will be in full swing.
We meandered about, me sometimes sideways, many times wrestling with Sideways Bertha to keep her aligned, pushing my arm muscles to their limit. We also spent time eating as we kayaked. Eating before we kayaked, as we kayaked and after we kayaked. In fact, I don't recall a time in the entire trip that I didn't have something in my mouth. I also had the camera at the ready to capture wildlife or scenes of natural beauty as we made our way.
Photo: The Island of Music
A few miles into our cruise, we came across an island, a sandbar really, in the middle of the river. It was a place that Tanjariitta knew about from her last trip here. We stopped off for lunch. As we were stretching out and taking a break from all of the "hard work" of drifting down the river, we discovered the island's hidden treasure. The sand we walked on could sing! As we walked over the course sand, it would chirp. Investigating further, we found that by continuously rubbing our hands through the sand produced sounds equivilent to the sound of a wineglass caressed by a wet finger. The sand could be played tonally (although not very easy to control the pitch) as well as percussively. The favorite sounds it made was when we would hold as much sand between our hands as we could and rub back and forth. As sand would fall out, the chirping pitch went from a low woop, woop, woop to a higher and increaslingly faster wip, wip, wip, wip, wip! Truly amazing indeed. We enjoyed a little more over an hour on the island, eating and playing our secret sand music. It was difficult to pull oursleves away from it, knowing that we may never see it again.
Further down the river we came to the only whitewater rapids in all of Florida, the Big Shoals. It's not huge, but it is listed as a Class III rapids and certainly not runnable with a kayak that has a reputation of running sideways. We pulled off at a portage site and walked on ahead. All of the rapids come only to about 100 meters (roughly 100 yards) in length. A large number of boulders marked the beginning of the falls with several more areas of rapids after and culmonated in about a 7 foot drop overall. It might have been fun with a sport kayak and no gear, or maybe if there had been a little more water on the river, but not having any experience or training with rough water, we decided that the extra work to portage would be worth it. Not to mention that above the shoals is a State park with plenty of camp sites within earshot of the shoals. So we decided to put in for the night there.
Photo: Big Shoals
Our site overlooked the shoals on the down river side. Beautiful white noise behind our camping experience. Softly lulling the mind into deeper relaxation.
The state park we stayed at was beautiful. However the people that used the park before us must not have ever known how to camp. The saying goes, "Take only pictures, leave only footprints." The area was littered with toilet paper around every turn. Not like a garbage bag burst and the wind carried it away, but the places where people had to make a deposit. I stopped counting the piles I saw, it was really disgusting, I mean really, how difficult is it to respect nature, the park, the other people who will be using the park after you to simply gather your paper and either burn it or place it in your garbage bags? It isn't difficult.
That evening, after we got a modest campfire going, with the modest amount of firewood we found in the area, we sat, ate freeze-dried chicken stew, leftover mac & cheese (from a neighboring camper) and sipped on wine minis. It was a meal unbecoming of a night in the wilderness and a nice way to end our first day on the river. After we were both done with the meal, we each admitted to each other that the chicken stew was perhaps one of the worst camp meals we have ever cooked and compared the experience to cooking cardboard! At least we weren’t hungry anymore, but the thought of gnawing on tree bark did cross my mind once or twice while eating…
The hush of the river sixty yards away, a soft breeze in the tent and slowly dipping temperatures gently put us to sleep. Strangely enough though I never could sleep all that well camping. I guess I sleep with one eye open if there is any possibility of gators around – even though we were high above the river.
Photo: The Close of Day One
