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.
