Hi, all...it's Sandy Kramer in Miami...been lurking. Seems as if popup camping ( and the spending of money thereon!!) is occupying a lot of time. I did put the Proracs on top of the wee Jayco (8' box) and once transported the 9' Kiwi Lob. It's only worth doing if yer camping at water's edge. Just got back from camping at WP Franklin Lock & Dam on the Caloosahatchee River. It's on the Okeechobee Waterway, east of Fort Myers (on the west coast of Florida). Very nice campground (not nature-ey like state parks) with all waterfront sites (they even have boat-in campsites for the same $16.50 a night). The picnic tables had roof shelters and the rest room was spotless. Mostly RV-oriented. We put in on the north side of the CG and headed up the Caloosahatche, which was like paddling I-95. HOWEVER, the vast majority of power boaters slowed down for me and waved, while I waved/said "thank you," as did the jet skiers (they didn't wave, but were obviously being courteous). The ones who didn't, peeled away from me. Yes, I did have a lot of wake, but absolutely no maliciousness. QUESTION: i WAS IN A HOBIE PURSUIT and kept stopping to turn my bow into the wake waves, fearful of broaching. When I asked one of the guys who'd been paddling a Scupper Pro, he said that he never did cos his boat was very stable. Ocean Kayaks have a high freeboard, whereas the Hobie sits low in the water. I feel safer stopping and turning, but it sure slows you down a lot. Comments? I had stayed back waiting for someone who didn't show, so ended up paddling solo. Took a straight run across the wide, wide river and entered Hickey Creek. What a lovely paddle. I shot a whole roll (24 exps) film this weekend, something I rarely do. Hickey Creek is about 4 miles and I thought I'd gotten almost to the end when I turned around, but found out from another paddler that there is a preserve with a put-in. I took pictures of flowers, river wildnerness spots (interspersed with the many houses) and some amusing things like the plastic Santa Claus perched on top of one house, the painted, wooden boat and wooden BLUE crab on one dock, and the serene statue of a half-naked woman (breasts exposed but the rest modestly draped) in a little cul-de-sac. The funniest part was that some of the locals use live lawn ornaments: first I saw a cow and calf running across someone's riverfront lawn and the next house had a horse grazing....."wait a minute, that's not a horse (I was on the opposite side of the river), must be a deer." Got out the binoculars and saw it was a llama. Ha!.. On the return trip I paddled on that side of the river to get a closer "shot" of the llama, and that was when I saw the bale of hay - llama feed, I thought. Oh, oh.....that bale of hay is moving. ...ohmygod...it's a fricking camel !!!!!! Took the Kodak moment to stretch my legs and have a quick dip in the river when all of a sudden two huge, barking Great Danes came lumbering in my direction. (Took 'em long enough...I reckon the owners let 'em out to get rid of me). Fortunately, I had started to leave and already had the PFD/hat/sunglasses on. Well, they won't come in the water, will they? LIKE HELL THEY WON'T. I"m like "Oh, shit." "Good doggies....good doggies... Okay, aleady....I'm leaving." I'm struggling to climb aboard in, by now, waist high water, while the dogs stop to drink in (to them) ankle high water, with my paddle (safely attached to its jet ski kill switch paddle leash (thanks to Ralph Diaz for this suggestion) on the wrong side of the boat. So there I am, paddling to get out of, hopefully, the range the great danes would be willing to swim, with my paddle on very a short length of leash. Once in the clear, I released the velcro and pulled the leash under the boat and rehitched the paddle. Quite a fun day. The weather was glorious (we won't discuss the THUNDERSTORM the night before when I found out that my Slumberjack Raptor tent was no longer waterproof - does storing it in the attic in south florida affect the coating?) and I got positively soaked. didn't want to take the popup for just one night and I was going to work the flea market in Key Largo early sunday morning). *************************************************************************** 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/ ***************************************************************************Received on Mon Apr 21 2003 - 06:32:40 PDT
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