Wacissa River 12/29/07

Yesterday I drove over to Tallahassee to see Tami. She was working in Tallahassee this week and was driving over to pick the kids up at the grandparents house in Jay Fl. We had our Date night in Tallahassee this week. Today I woke up an the weather was looking really bad. A front was pushing into the area. So I decided to go check out the river at the very least, since I was all the way over here. When I got to the river there were some people putting a canoe in. Of course this made me want to paddle as well. As soon as I got the boat in the water I see this deer swimming across the river. I hurry and paddle up towards it and take some pictures. The deer gets out of the water and stares at me for a minute and then moves off into the woods. I ended up seeing 2  deer today both of them swam across the river. The Second one was being chased by hunting dogs. When the dogs finally got to the river one of them jump in and swam across. The second dog decided it wasn't a good day for a swim and waited on the bank for a while before disappearing back into the woods. 

After paddling for a short while I saw this turtle sitting on a log. He was just hanging out he watched me go by and stayed where he was.

This was a group of Ibis, there were 6 of them these 4 were pretty close together. They were standing on the bank. 2 of them were fishing around for something.

New Boat

I have been saving my money for a few months now and finally bought a new boat. It is a Bell Canoe (Did I mention it is Kevlar) It is 15.5 Feet long and it only weighs 42 pounds! I can load on and off the car with ease. I took it out on the lake today to try it out. It paddles very nice. The boat seems to go through the water very well also. I tried out a kayak paddle and really liked that. I think a lot of my paddling will be solo. Since I plan on using the boat to take pictures. I am going to go paddle the Wacissa River next weekend. I hope to have some good pictures to show from my trip. 

Todays trip started out by carrying the boat to the lake in the rain. I decided that I was going to try it out no matter what. I put the boat into the water and got in. It is pretty stable. Sitting in the back seat it lifts the bow up too much. I was able to kneel in the boat more towards the middle and it was much more balanced. I am planning on either adding another seat or turning the boat around and paddling from the other seat. I need to relocate the thwart to a different location. That is the easiest option. I would like to find a place to mount my GPS that I got for a Christmas present. I am checking into a thwart bag with some kind of pocket with a window.  Tonight I made some webbing loops using Samantha's new sewing machine. The loops wrap around one of the supports under the hood and they barely stick out of the hood. I will use these to tie the front of the canoe to keep it stable while driving on the highway. I will post pictures and a report of how this works out next week. Now I am just waiting for the weekend.