Kayaking 9/27 - Fanning Springs and Cedar Key - Yum Seafood!

Average Speed 2.8 mph, Max Speed 5.3 mph                            6.3 miles          948.8 total
Average Speed 2.5 mph, Max Speed 4.4 mph                             3.2 miles         952 total

Shingle Landing?
We took down camp and had breakfast and headed to Shingle Landing. It's located right on the Suwanee River and there was a beautiful reflection with bright blue skies and white clouds in the sky. Shingle landing is just south of Otter Springs.   It's a public launch and a perfect little entry into the Suwanee River. We paddled 6.2 miles in two hours and 12 minutes.  The scenery doesn't change much, it's a wide river with lots of cypress trees along the side and knobs sticking up with beautiful reflections along the way.  We saw lots of fish jumping and as we get closer to Fanning Springs we noticed a sign for sturgeon. We saw a few jumping and they were huge so they must've been sturgeon.  We left the kayaks at the boat launch area and Scotty rode his bike 6 miles up to Otter Springs. I swam around at Fanning Springs which is 72°. Where the water bubbles up is not very dramatic, it's a big hole and there were only a few fish swimming around in the fenced off area. But the water is a beautiful clear water and it was fun swimming around.

This was the view from the launch!  A preview of a pretty day!

And we're off!

We drove to Cedar Key immediately to Tony's restaurant. We split a bowl of clam chowder that was absolutely delicious and split a salad and a seafood platter and then to top it all off we had a piece of Key Lime pie. We were stuffed and happy.  By now it was 3 o'clock so we took the kayaks out and paddled around the closest island. It appeared that we were paddling against the waves and it took us about 20 minutes to get over to the island. We paddled around the backside of the island and found a sandy spot where we got out and did a little bit of swimming to cool off. Soon after we came to a spot where we saw a few sharks swimming under the water, they were only 3 to 4 feet long.  We weren't intending to paddle long so we paddled back to Cedar Key and once again it seemed as if we were paddling against the waves.  We loaded up the kayak and set the GPS to get over to Lake Louisa State Park. We managed to arrive just at sunset which is the last time of the day when they will give out a tent site. So in the dark we set up our tent on the concrete slab under the pavilion. Sadly our extension cord didn't reach into the tent so no fan tonight and it's a still hot night.