Wandering the Wacissa

Our younger son was home for the weekend for the first time in quite a while so this morning we took the old Grumman canoe out to the Wacissa River and put in at the main spring. It has been over a year since that boat had seen water other than rain. With two strong paddlers, I got the middle seat that I refer to as the "Cleopatra seat," as I don't have to work and can just enjoy the ride.

The river was flat calm and more free of vegetation than we had seen it in a while.

We saw many birds and I took many shaky, terrible pictures from my Cleopatra seat.

We saw only two alligators, quite a few turtles, 3-4 turkeys (and on the drive home, 5-6 more), and of course lots of fish in the clear, cool water. The water was so cool in fact that as the morning grew warmer, the inside of the aluminum canoe began to sweat like crazy, pooling in the bottom.

We went down to Cassidy Spring. It was quite clear. The lighter area is the bottom between two deep holes. There were larger fish coming and going from the holes.

We went up to Big Blue Spring. Here is the entrance run up to it off the main river.

The spring itself was cloudy with sediment flowing up and the bottom could not be seen anywhere. There were two sunning platforms. We only remembered one.

We took a different way back to the main river. That was where we scared up the turkeys that were roosting high above our heads. I took two terrible pictures of one of them.

All along the banks, the cardinal flowers were just beautiful. We have one in our butterfly garden, but I had no idea that they could flourish IN the water.

The wild rice was also putting on quite a show.

 

The pollen was floating on the water.

The rice was not ready for eating. We would like to try that sometime.

We cut a few stalks of pickerel weed flowers and in so doing found the pink eggs of apple snails attached to their leaves and stalks.

This web caught the eye of our son.

By the time we headed back upstream, the clouds had moved in but a gentle breeze at our back helped blow us toward the landing.

A damsel in distress? Or just hitchin' a ride?

 

We had a great time. Now to see the pictures I WISH I had taken, go to http://paddletales.blogspot.com/. Peggy's photos are simply stunning---especially when you consider that she takes them in her kayak.