I realized I didn't post about my kayaking excursion from the weekend before last! It had been a while, so I felt I really ought to get back out on the water, and I'd enjoyed the couple Sunday-morning paddles I'd done on the Wekiva, so I loaded up bright and early again. And now that summer's winding down and school's back in session, there was even less traffic than usual on the river, which was nice. I'm sure I was the first one out from Wekiva Springs State Park, and I didn't meet anyone coming the other way until near the Rock Springs confluence. I went downstream to just past Wekiva Island, and then came back up. And as the image up top teases, I made some friends!

( Clicky! )

Sunday morning we had no plans, so I thought it might be a good opportunity to load up my kayak and hit the water. After that nice paddle along the Wekiva River a few weeks back, I'd wanted to go there again. So I tossed the boat in the van and off I went!

( More! )

Even though I don't really have many photos to show, and I don't usually include trips to the neighborhood lake since those don't feel like proper paddling excursions, I wanted to make sure to note the weekend's developments in the kayaking department. See, we'd been considering getting a small, inexpensive kayak for the older girls to try out and see if they like it. I had one in mind at the sporting goods store, so when I got a Memorial Day weekend 25%-off coupon we said what the heck, no time like the present. I took the girls to the store and picked up one of these--normally $120, but on sale for $110 and then the 25% on top of that, not a bad deal at all!



It's a cute little thing, nothing special but nice and lightweight. Hallie was really keen on getting it as soon as I mentioned the idea. Hermione kinda leaned towards not-interested, but she's always like that with new things until she actually tries it and finds she loves it. Anyway, we got it home Friday evening and tossed it in the pool so they could try it out in a controlled environment. Naturally, it was a big hit immediately:





Both girls really took right to it and figured out paddling pretty easily, even though the only paddles I have are adult-sized. They had a little trouble stopping and reversing, but that'll come with time. They also practiced climbing back up onto it from the water, and even standing up on it to see how stable it was. And we had them see what floating with a lifejacket on feels like too, which is good to know.

Yesterday evening our area was dodging some thunderstorms, but they all seemed to be going around us and not coming through, so I loaded my kayak onto its wheels, put the kid kayak inside (perfect fit!) and hauled them down to the neighborhood lake. Took two spins out and back--the first time I had Hallie and Amy on my boat while Hermione tried out the new one, and then Hallie took the new one and I took Amy again. It did start raining, but just a light sprinkle that we hardly even felt, so not bad. And again, the girls both did just fine with the new kayak--really well, in fact. We got out through the lily pads into the open water of the lake, then just paddled around for a while and watched a pair of terns swoop around and occasionally dive into the lake to catch dinner. It was quite peaceful, and I think the girls really enjoyed it too. No photos, though--I wished I'd brought my camera, but I wasn't sure if I'd need to do any rescuing or towing, and with the rain it's just as well I left it behind too. Next time!

I'm really excited that maybe we can start paddling as a family pretty soon! With the new member of our fleet I could take all 3 girls out, with one of them on the little kayak and two on mine. But I think our plan now is to procure one more kayak, a mid-sized one that would work for me when I'm going out alone (the big kayak is nice, but it's such a pain to get up on the van and muscle around out of the water, I worry about how secure it is while driving, and on the water it's a bit slow), but that Hermione or Heather could handle solo too. Then we could all hit the water with me and Amy and another kid on the big kayak, Heather or Hermione on the medium one, and Hallie or Hermione on the little one. Lots of options! I could even see us getting another one of the kid kayaks since this one seems to be a hit, but then it would become problematic to haul all 4 around without getting a trailer of some sort. I guess we'll see what happens.

I was actually reluctant to post this as a Paddling Diaries entry, because it was a rather short one and I didn't get many photos. But oh well, it was an excursion so I guess it counts. :)

The plan was to go to PEAR (Palatlakaha Environmental and Agricultural Reserve) Park near Leesburg--it looked like a neat place to check out, and it has a canoe/kayak launch for the Palatlakaha River, a section of which runs through the park. So I loaded up the kayak and off we went. We played on the playground first, then ate the lunch we'd brought, and then thought we'd take a little hike. So we did that, which was quite nice--we walked for maybe a half hour and still only checked out a portion of the park, the place is big!

After the hike, Heather took the younger girls back to the playground while Hermione and I went to get the kayak and take a paddle. So I got the kayak down and onto its cart, and hauled it down the path to the boat launch.. only to find that the ramp's gate was closed and locked, and the river itself was choked with weeds and would be a nightmare to paddle anyway. Lesson learned: always check the launch and water before unloading the kayak!

So much for Plan A, then, and I had no Plan B. But we'd taken the kayak that far, I wanted to use the damn thing! We realized we were only about 10 miles from Lake Griffin State Park, which we'd first visited a month or two back and really liked because of the huge live oak tree that lives there. So we headed over there, got a new state parks annual pass, and hit the water. I took Hermione and Amy out and back for a little bit first, and then dropped them off and took Hallie for a short ride. Like I said, it was pretty short, maybe 45 minutes total on the water, but it was a gorgeous day to be outside so it was a good day anyhow. After I got the kayak back on the van, we headed out to visit the Mammoth Oak (where the girls had a ball again), and then headed home.

So have a few pictures! ( Clicky )
Oh, as a sidenote, when we purchased the new state parks pass, the guy made it valid through February 2017! I don't think he meant to do that--when he first said 2017 I figured he'd just misspoken so I didn't correct him, and then when he proceeded to write 2017 as the expiration date and punch 2017 on the pass card itself, I thought it too late to correct him! So I guess we'll see if someone at another park questions and/or corrects it, but 3 years for the price of one sounds pretty good to me!

So like I said, for this past Saturday I was contemplating a few destinations for a proper kayaking excursion, with a few criteria. To wit:

-Not too far away (say 90 minutes, tops)
-Good scenery (may as well start out with something awesome, right?)
-Easy access for put-in and take-out
-Minimal launch fees
-Reasonable distance between put-in/take-out
-Something for Heather and the kids to do while I'm on the water

When we found out Stef (my sister-in-law) was going to come along too, I wanted to make it somewhere really good too, since we're sort of showing her the highlights of the state (as she just moved here last summer). So we decided on Silver Springs. At first I was thinking we'd just take turns paddling around the headsprings area (at the old Silver Springs amusement park site, which became a state park in October), but it turned out that I could put in at Silver Springs and paddle about 2 miles downstream to the dock at (what used to be) Silver River State Park, and that sounded like a good distance to start.

( Continued below the cut! )