I had the pleasure of paddling Blackwater Creek in the Seminole State Forest in central Florida Saturday. We'll be posting the trip details on KayakGuide.com soon, but for now, the photos are on the Photo Album at: http://www.kayakguide.com/PhotoAlbum/ It was about a 9 mile paddle; 6 miles downstream on Blackwater Creek and 3 miles upstream on the Wekiva River to the take out. As you'll see from the photos, Blackwater Creek is a shallow, gorgeous, limbo-required, tannic darkened stream through some old growth forest that is practically impossible for motor boats to access. The section of the Wekiva we paddled is frequented by more power boats and sadly, has some litter. Yet even that was a nice paddle as we were able to stop along sandy beaches along the 3 miles of clear, spring fed water. We saw blooming bromeliads, huge hardwood trees, a couple of snakes, a HUGE owl (which I was barely able to photograph with my modest 3X zoom lens), and spiders the size of horses (all right, I exaggerate a little). The awe-inspiring forest canopy was so thick, so high and so constant on Blackwater Creek that we saw few reptiles on the cool paddle. The sunnier, more open Wekiva had many turtles and gators. We saw baby gators on both streams. -- Al Vazquez KayakGuide.com tm Places to Paddle tm - Kayaking - Canoeing - Rafting - *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
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