We had five paddlers on the North Florida 7 day Suwannee River trip, Paul Beebe, Pam Gowdy, Ben Quaintance, Morgan Brunstrom (Bellingham, WA) and Robert Landreneau (Lafayette, LA). We paddled 94 miles over 7 days from the White Springs, HWY 41 ramp to the Branford, Ivey Memorial park ramp.
Generally the weather was good with nightly lows in the low 60’s and daytime highs in the mid 80’s. We only had a couple hours of rain on Tuesday; otherwise the skies were partly cloudy with moderate winds. We spent each night in one of Florida’s canoe camps plus one state park cabin. A couple of the canoe camp entry stairs had flood damage which require a bit extra effort to get into the camps, but everyone pitched in to get through.
The group stopped at Suwannee Springs and walked around the remains of the 19th century bathhouse on Monday. On Tuesday we paddled into the Alapaha River Rise. From Wednesday until Saturday all were able to paddle directly into an array of first and second magnitude springs, Charles Spring, Lafayette Springs, Telford Springs, Running Springs, Convict Springs, Royal Springs, Mearson Springs, Troy Springs, Little River Springs and Branford Springs.
Wednesday we took a break and walked around the Dowling Park retail center. Pam scouted out a thrift store and bought a $1.00 pair of “like new” jeans. The rest of us settled for cold drinks and ice cream. On Friday we lunched at Grandma Susie’s Cookin Kitchen at Convict springs.
Our shuttle met us at 1:00 on Saturday for the trip back to our cars in Live Oak, FL.
Another great trip on the Suwannee with 5 canoe camps, one state park cabin, and lots of limestone bluffs, and white sand beaches and 10 giant springs. Pictures can be seen here.