Kayak Canoe Alabama

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Apalachee River to Causeway 2005 XXXI

Tuesday, May 17, 2005 brint.adams@us.army.mil

Tony Dockery was the mystery man I saw last Tuesday, who read my post and decided to give it a try tonight. We met at the usual Riverdocs parking lot and put in around 5:10 PM on a beautiful, sunny afternoon with a southerly breeze and 82 degrees. The water was about medium height and rising. We headed east to Apalachee River, passing an airboat taking sightseers from Blue Gill's dock. I arrived in 7:46 and waited a couple of minutes for Tony to catch up.

We started out again heading west and along the north bank of Pass Picada, cutting over to the Causeway and on to the Interstate bridges. A couple of fishermen were watching me intently as I was heading for a gator who was crossing in front of me. When I got too close, he ducked under as I passed over his wake. I made the turn in 32:56 and took a short drink break.

Tony made it past the culverts and over to where the Interstate on-ramp starts and turned around, probably about 1200 meters short of where I turned. I hit it pretty hard on the way back, focusing on Tony, to see if I could catch up. It turned out he was not pushing real hard at that point, and I passed him with about 200 meters to go, finishing in 50:38.

As we put up our kayaks, Tony spotted another gator just offshore heading towards the bank just to the west of us. These were the first two gators I have seen so far this spring/summer along the course, which was surprising to me.

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