Kayak Canoe Alabama

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Apalachee River to Causeway 2005 XLVIII

Tuesday, July 12, 2005 brint.adams@us.army.mil

Well, Hurricane Dennis came, fizzled and moved on with little damage (or even rain) to Spanish Fort or the Mobile Tensaw Delta. I have a good system down now for boarding up the windows on our house, taking only about two hours to put up and less to take it down. With a couple more possible storms heading into the Carribean, we might have to make hurricane preparations again in the next few weeks.

But, I cannot let a little storm interfere with getting out on the water, so out I went this afternoon after work. When I arrived at Riverdocs, the water level was very high, almost flowing into the parking lot. It was high tide about a half hour before I got there, but the over-riding reason was all of the rainfall coming down river, dumped from Hurricane Dennis over the past two days. At 5:15 PM, it was 83 degrees, partly cloudy with a southeasterly breeze and the start of a falling tide.

While I put in, there was a fairly large gator hanging around only about 10 meters away. He eyed me warily, until I started to slowly paddle towards him, when he ducked under the surface. I started out heading east as usual, in the high water, and got to the Apalachee in 6:59. On the way back, I tried to hug the south bank to stay out of the current and passed the parking lot in 15:52. The big gator was back on the surface watching me paddle by on the way to the Causeway. There were no fishermen or boats out as I headed for the Interstate bridges, making the turn in 33:34. This was not a particularly fast time, even though I was paddling against the current, for the most part, so I decided to try and pick up the pace on the return, even though the sun was still pretty intense.

My return time was a fairly quick 17:06, for a total of 50:43. The big gator was still hanging out, to welcome me back.

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