Some Boat Ramps Are Myths

Day Eleven

It is our last full day of paddling on the river.  We will be headed down and camping about 5 mile from the gulf so we plan to make the most of this last day. 

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Early in the day as we were paddling I saw a family of boar (since I was leading the kayak caravan I got the best view of wildlife) and a few white tailed deer.  

Margaret swears she saw an elephant.  We laughed at her but when we googled it we learned that apparently there are people in the area who own elephants or work for an elephant sanctuary so maybe she really did see one! Regardless, we mocked her thoroughly for her inability to tell the difference between an elephant and a large rock.

I had learned that Suwannee, apparently, comes from the Timucuan Indian word Suwani meaning “crooked black water”.  Today was overcast and the name seemed more appropriate than ever as we entered a winding section of the river that looked more black than its usual orange color under the clouds.  

Abby was exhausted (hungover) so I offered to pull her.  I pulled her for about an hour and a half before I forgot she was there and enthusiastically paddled toward the shore to look at a crazy flower.  She woke up with a face full of pine needles and decided she would just paddle herself from then on. It hurts so much when your hard work and care is unappreciated.

For lunch we stopped at the Fowler’s Bluff Ramp and all feasted merrily and looked over our growing collection of river maps.  

After lunch the sky cleared up and the wind shifted to be at our backs, a welcome treat, and we made relatively quick progress until it started to get dark and we began to hear thunder.  Margaret likes to paddle slowly and steadily near the shore and admire the plantlife, Frankie and I paddle in quick spurts and then slow down and drift for a minute.  All in all our paces are fairly evenly matched but it did mean that when it started to rain we were about half a mile ahead of Margaret.  We decided to wait out the rain by tying our kayaks up to the bottom of a USGS observation tower in the middle of the river.  The USGS is excellent at not only collecting data about the Suwannee but also building structures to keep the rain off while you use your stove to cook dinner in your kayak. Eventually the rain passed and we found Margaret, we were only about a mile from our campsite so we all went on together.

Based on the map we THOUGHT there was a boat ramp up a small creek so we paddled up a creek through a swamp for about 45 minutes before we realized we had been misled.  We turned around and returned to the river to look for solid ground.  The only other campground was about 4 miles downriver and night was coming on quickly and the rain was threatening to start again.

We paddled quickly and the closer we got to our supposed campground the more we realized that although tides had never entered into our minds they were definitely something we should have considered.  We fought against the incoming tide until we got to the town of Suwannee.  We paddled up a few canals looking for the Anderson Landing river camp but couldn’t find it and couldn’t find anyone who knew anything about it.  Eventually we met some folks who knew the owner of a marina and suggested we sleep on the dock.  We set up our tents and made friends with some locals.  Abby and I walked into town for pie.  Margaret went to sleep.  When we got back it started raining and thundering and we hunkered down in our tents for the night thankful for full bellies, cold gatorade, and peanut butter pie.