All my Friends have left

On
Friday Dec 22 we decided to take another bike ride west of Fishhawk Creek to Boyette Springs and Shadow Run Parks. I have done this ride many times with Peggy so I lead Barry & Kimberly to the Boyette Springs Park with no problems but then my memory of the route got a little fuzzy, I was trying to find the path shown by the dashed red line through the Bell Creek Nature Preserve with all of its hiking trails. First I got a little lost trying to find the entrance which is a little gate off of Brughfield St. Then when we found it instead of the short sandy trail shown by the dashed red line to Donneymoor Dr, I rode all around on the blue trails shown on the map below. Barry found the right way while I rode around in circles. We eventually got to our lunch spot on Lake Grady. It turned out to be a nice 20 mile bike ride from camp.

On Saturday we
decided to do the Alafia (Al-a–fee-ah) River again from Alderman Ford to our camp,
the flow had dropped from 315 cfs to 140 cfs but there was still enough water
for a nice paddle. Barry decided to bike the shuttle, about a 7 mi bike ride.

 I passed by this little alligator on the log and didn’t
even see him, Barry took his picture after I passed by. The 9 mile paddle took about 3-1/2 hrs.

 Barry dropped Kimberly off at a friend’s house on Saturday night for a visit but then on Tuesday she flew to Nashville to help a community devastated by a tornado last month, she won’t rejoin our trip.

On Sunday and again
on Christmas we watched the NFL football games on TV.

By Wednesday we decided we needed to paddle again, so we
did the Lower Alafia again which had dropped from 215 to 120 cfs. I was pleased that there was still enough water that we made it over the shallow shoals without touching a rock.

Barry again did a 8 mi bike shuttle.

We saw the biggest alligator yet on this section.

We paddled about 7 miles to reach the Brandon Boat Ramp. If  you liked flatwater you could paddle another 9 miles and reach Tampa Bay. Of course there would be a lot of motorboat traffic.

The light rain started late Tuesday night and continued to about 10 am on Wednesday. Barry decided maybe this was a good time to start driving north.  If the traffic was not too bad he might
paddle the Ichetucknee River near Lake City and then stay overnight at Ocean Pond campground. However there was a lot of slow traffic near Ocala so he got off on US301 and decided to start heading further north which could possibly get him home to Pittsburgh by Friday night.

Peggy loved these rivers and was always ready to paddle