Kayaking - Hontoon Island

 10.1 miles, 2.7 avg speed, 4:52 minutes elapsed time

Today we headed over towards blue Springs State Park. We unloaded at French Landing and kayaked over towards the springs. We couldn’t go into the springs so we didn’t see any manatees, but we did see a bobber attached to a manatee that had apparently been rescued according to a nearby paddling guide. With paddled upstream pass the Springs for about a half mile and entered into snake Creek. This wasn’t a wide creek as it was lined by water plants for pretty much the whole way. There were lots and lots of irises in the trees and they would fly off as we got here it made for a pretty paddle. We only saw a couple of baby alligators in this creek. There wasn’t much current in this creek but we did have to pedal continuously. About a half mile before the end of the creek, we noticed a park bench along the bank. It looks like a perfect spot for a picnic and it turned out to be an Eagle Scout project. This was Hontoon Island. From here we turned right into the dead river which was considerably wider. We did see bigger alligators in this river and some birds. We paddled up this river until it meant the St. Johns River where we turned right as soon after that is hunting Island State Park visitor Center. They have a nice kayak launch there so we pulled up and took a bathroom break and let BenjiBear run around the grounds for a while. Back into the kayak and we paddled past the lagoon until we got to The Saint johns river again. At this point my arms were feeling a little sore. It was probably about 3 miles from here to the takeout and it was upstream but we did have a tail wind.  We did see the biggest alligator we have ever seen in our travels and rather than stop to take a picture we paddled faster. Poor BenjiBear was tired of the kayak by this point. He was so tired and every time he started to fall asleep something would wake him up. We were all very glad when we got to the end. It turned out to be a 10 mile paddle and we felt quite accomplished. That night for dinner we had bratwurst and Kraut and beer – it was a well-deserved dinner.