Saturday Kayak

[todabrilla]

We were supposed to go out in Freelance today but the weather looked potentially dangerous this morning with a very good chance of afternoon thunderstorms. We really didn't want to be out on Apalachee Bay with a tall metal pole poking up well above the surrounding salt water. Lightning is the biggest concern for Florida summer activities. Well, it turned out to be an absolutely beautiful day. I took Castor to the dog park because he has been acting like he was fit to explode from excess energy recently. He burned off some of that cooped up canine energy playing with other dogs today. Then I took the kayak down to the boat ramp at the San Marcos Fort in St Marks. I debated heading up the Wakulla since this is the confluence of the two rivers, but then changed my mind and turned her bow upstream on the St Marks River. There was quite a lot of boat traffic, much of it either skirting the edge of the no wake limits or completely ignoring them when they got far enough outside the town. This gave me a chance to see how the kayak handles wake, which she took with grace. I explored a few small tributary creeks as far up as I could go. And I kept going on up the river. It's largely undeveloped past the Refinery/Powerplant but there are occasional houses with some pretty large sloops and ketches moored on them. There was plenty of wildlife and there was much more activity than the other day when I went out. I saw many osprey, got really close to a juvenile yellow-crowned night heron, saw an otter flash by, encountered myriad cooters and a handful of cormorants, as well as pileated woodpeckers, and a mess of seagulls and swallows. At one point a jetski was coming up to give a tow to a large motor boat that had broken down. The owner of the drifting boat hailed me and jokingly asked if I would be willing to help give him a tow too. I replied that I had eaten nowhere near enough Wheaties today for that! Finally as the daylight started to fade and some storm clouds started to form (perhaps we would get that promised storm after all), I turned back. I was within a mile of Newport, but it wasn't worth it to continue just to say I'd made it to the next town. Going back the tide had started to go out which along with the river's meager current helped a bit, but I did have to battle a considerable head wind for most of the way. The wind was picking up in advance of the possible storm. The Riverside Cafe was rocking as I got back into town and I packed up, and went to the Wakulla River Park to watch the setting sun before turning back to home.

The total jaunt was about 7.5 miles round trip.