A Day on the Water

It's always fun to go for a paddle. Mark even lets me paddle a bit these days because it doesn't do his arthritis much good when he tries to do it all himself. (Clearly, my days as a kayak/canoe princess are over.)

We got the two-seater kayak and headed out on the Indian River. We'd been paddling for an hour and a half to two hours when Mark announced that his posterior was hurting - (not his exact words). We needed to find a beach.

I spotted what might be a beach across the water. We would paddle another 20 minutes to reach it. It was very small - enough space to park the kayak and get out for a while. A wee bit of sand mixed in with crushed shells and rocks - but good enough to get out and walk around as long as you had on shoes. (We considered sitting on our life jackets but decided that it might be too hard to get back up. - Those shells were razor sharp!)

There wasn't much to explore - mostly just mangroves and a tiny beach area. Mark started picking up every rock in the water to see what was under it. (Mostly barnacles and very tiny crabs.) But he left no stone unturned. He even managed to cut himself and get blood on his shorts - good thing we weren't in shark-infested water.) Even though I didn't know him when he was five, I'm certain this is exactly how he behaved at that age.

See the tiny crab??

Once we got back in the boat, we paddled over to Little Jim's Bait and Tackle to get some conch fritters for lunch. A hole in the wall if ever I saw one, but the food was very good and they even had live music.

After lunch we went back out on the water for a couple more hours. We were looking for manatees because there were signs declaring certain areas "wake free zones" because of manatees. We didn't see any and were later told that it was a bit late in the season for them. (I know that whales are seasonal but I didn't know manatees were.) But we did see dolphins - one came up very close to our kayak but it was so fast and I was so busy looking that I didn't get a photo. Also, lots of pelicans, diving birds, and multitudes of jumping fish.

And it was so serene and quiet - for the most part. Every now and again something motorized would come by and make noise and waves - but most of the day was extremely peaceful.

Here are a few more photos.