Friday, August 8, 2008

Exploration Trip Up River

Bill surprised me with a boat trip yesterday in the late afternoon..........after we had a call from the County that there was a form missing from our permit application and we had to go and get it and fill it out. Well, we tried to get help at Home Depot because we needed to find hurricane codes ...and.....well , it is not the employee's fault he doesn't know anything, it is the Employers. Suffice it to say we have to go back again this morning to get all the hurricane codes for the windows and doors we will purchase.

To rid us of the tension...........hence the surprise of the boat ride!

We began by launching in Crescent Lake, at the public launch at the restaurant called Three Bananas. I had my map of the waterways this time and off we headed-even tho it was all new to us, it was wonderful to zip along-hardly another boat in sight and all the tension just blew away!



We headed north to Dunn's Creek......and 20 minutes we found the mouth to the creek and did some real sight-seeing and exploration! This was a real bayou-like little river.....beautiful! So many birds along the shoreline...cormorants, egrets, and blue herons.

I will continue this tour later ; I have to head to town! Sorry!


INTERMISSION

Back from our permit refiling and ordering our windows and doors and lumber! Let the good times roll!


All along Dunn's Creek were beautiful and graceful Cyprus tree. We saw one large alligator along the edge of the water just before we joined the St Johns River...we laughed because there were kids jumping in under the bridge having a great time and the gator was only about 2,000' downstream waiting! The locals all swim without much worry about the gator population but we could never enjoy a swim in the river-no way!

Here is the restaurant we have visited in the past, Gator Landing in East Palatka. It was a favorite of ours until the prices went up and the menu size went down........sounds like the rest of corporate America! Still pretty from the river-it is neat to see landmarks we usually view from the road-side of things! We have seen dolphin swimming in the early evening from the pier outside this restaurant so we watch for them as we boat.




This is a communications tower but it looked like a vulture condo! There were quite a few in residence when we passed.




Coming back down the river into the lake we were met with some incredible cloud formations.

Bill remembered that we were supposed to have a fish/depth finder on the boat, we hunted around and found it and hooked it up when we were back on the lake. The water was 87 degrees and 14' deep--we had so much fun watching the changeds in depth-it will be fun to use it next time we travel up the creek!


There is a new restaurant opening soon in our little Crescent City...it is way to the right of the photo...to the left is our local Winn-Dixie store.





The trip sure did clear our heads and redirected our thoughts from the mountain of paperwork, to the serenity of God's creation. A much better focus than when we started out! There was room for improvement!

2 comments:

  1. Lovely photos - thanks for showing me your little corner of the world.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wonderful pictures, especially the blue heron. We don't have them on the island, but in the little harbors along the mainland coast they are quite accustomed to people; I once paddled my kayak up to a mere foot or two away from one.

    ReplyDelete

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