It was the perfect paddle to end our Florida 2025 adventure. We paddle 6 miles in an hour and 43 minutes of paddling time. The river was only about 3 feet deep, there were many twists and turns, and the water was absolutely clear. We saw four ducks and only a few turtles. We once again had the river to ourselves and it was spectacular.
When we got back to the trailer, we each took showers and did a quick cleanup of the trailer and hooked up to leave for Mississippi.
Peaden Bridge to Cotton Bridge, 5.5 miles, 1:50 paddling time, 70-78 degrees
When we are woke, we noticed that the lake was completely covered by fog. I walked down to take some pictures in the fog, actually hung around for quite a while as it was quite thick.
Then, a beautiful, relaxing paddle awaited us. We thought it would be longer, but it only turned out to be 5 1/2 miles. The entry point at Peden Bridge was a little bit steep, but I stood at the top and lowered the kayaks while Scotty got it from the bottom. Actually quite easy. The river was extremely clear, even if it was the brown resin water. There were many trees down, most likely from the last hurricane, but the great thing was that someone had already been through and cut. The logs were made paths through them. We didn’t see any fish along the river. We saw six ducks ahead of us and every time we would be close they would start quacking and flying and going crazy. The river twisted back-and-forth, but it was never difficult. Once we realized that we would be finished earlier than expected, we decided not to eat our lunch Going to go out afterwards for an early dinner. Instead, we went to a late lunch at the gator Café. I had an excellent grilled chicken salad and Scotty had a fried flounder sandwich. We both enjoyed our meals, but the true highlight were the most that we ordered afterwards. Oh my gosh, were they excellent. We both left with full tummies. Definitely worth it.
It was nice to have a relaxing morning around the campsite. We sat in our chairs overlooking the bay and then decided to go out for lunch. We rode down to a restaurant/bar called neons. Scotty had gators that were fresh to the restaurant and fried there. I had Maryland style crabcakes. We both agreed that our lunches were excellent. It was an 8 mile bike ride down and back. After that, we rode in the truck over to the Gulf of Mexico and laid out our blanket. We watched as the sand was dragged up from the gulf. The sand was a few hundred Yards offshore where they were apparently widening the channel after the last hurricane. As the sand came pouring onto the beach, made a river and there were lots of people out shell hunting. There were two bulldozers that pushed the sand to even out the beach. When we got back to the camper, we once again sat outside, but this time with a fire.
It was about a seven hour drive to Saint Andrews State Park. We’ve stayed at other parks down here on the Gulf of Mexico but this is our first time here and I really like this park. Our campsite is right on the Saint Andrews Bay we wrote our bikes around and went down to the Gulf of Mexico. We saw that they were dragging up sand from out in the golf and bringing it onto the beach on the way back. We saw a beautiful sunset, especially as we looked over a marshy area.
For future reference, if we ever come back to this park, Sites 92 and 93 our pool through and their parallel With easy access to walk onto the beach of the bay.
Scotty claims I am a whiny woman now. Let me tell you reader (reader being ME) why I was a whiny woman on this paddle. #1. At the put into the river there were signs stating not to swim or get in the river due to sewage contamination. And while I was waiting for Scotty to return, I did see two workers come down and retrieve a vile of water obviously to test it, I didn’t ask them anything about it because I did not want to know. #2. For the first 3 miles of this trip, there were many trees down and it was a bit of a challenge to manoeuvre around them. Fortunately, we only had two paddle one time I say that was fortunate because of reason number three.#3. We passed eight alligators today and it is no exaggeration to say that these were the biggest dang alligators we have ever passed. The first one was on a bank and I know it was longer than my 12 foot kayak as we paddle past he crawled into the water And our speed increased tremendously. Most of them were as fat as our kayaks so I don’t know what they’re eating, but they’re eating something. Also, we noticed that their skin was very sandy or dusty which made them look like logs before we realised they were actually an alligator. The paddle was 8 miles long and we did it in about three hours. It was one of those paddles where I was very very relieved for it to end.
It was nice to sleep in as we had really worn our self out the day before at Disney World. We hung out around the trailer and as we were sitting at the picnic table we noticed a raccoon climbing the tree which provided some campsite entertainment. We then headed over to Mim’s to the East Central Regional Rail Trail. Apparently, this trail is about 50 miles or more. We parked at Mims Methodist Church where they provide a parking lot and even a porta potty for bikers. We went north and it went under the trees. We biked a total of 14 miles. It was a great bike ride. The views were not varied, but that was okay.
8 miles away as a restaurant called Dixie crossroads. I remembered it from when I lived in Brevard County 40 years ago we had a fantastic seafood dinner. Scotty had a Gator poor boy sandwich and I had rock shrimp. One of the highlights of the meal were the corn hush puppies that they served first. Their menu is online who knows? Maybe someday I will try them next. We headed over to Kiwanis Island, an old stomping ground where are used to clog but this time I was there to Kayak When the new moon is out in January bio luminescent jellyfish can be seen so we went hoping to see them. We paddle in this lagoon but did not see any as it was dark. It was rather spooky paddling out there so we made it a short paddle. All in all a busy day
Today we went to Walt Disney World we arrived about 930 and left at closing time 11 o’clock. For a couple of old timers we hung in pretty well although we were very happy to see our beds when we got home. This is not our usual kind of vacation activity, but believe it or not we still had passes left over from when our kids were little – so they were probably 25 or 30 years old. According to the Internet, a one day pass into Disney World is anywhere from $109-$160. It would be quite expensive to take a family to Disney World. We noticed all ages and all ethnicities at the park. We rode 90% of the rides and had a great time.
