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EcoAdventures

Kayaking, anyone?

by Rob Diaz de Villegas August 22, 2011
by Rob Diaz de Villegas August 22, 2011 3 comments
Rob Diaz de Villegas WFSU-TV

IGOR chip- human appreciation 150

Here’s a vacation idea for you.

If you had the time, didn’t mind camping for months on end, and were physically up to paddling fifteen hundred miles, you could paddle around the entire state of Florida using trails mapped out by Doug Alderson.  He coordinates the Florida Circumnavigational Paddling Trail for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (Visit the trail’s web site).  You would pass by major urban centers like Tampa and Miami.  You would make your way through the entirety of the Florida keys.  And you would see a lot of amazing coastal habitats.

Ready to go?

_DSC2580

The Forgotten Coast segment of the trail starts in St. Joseph Peninsula State Park.

I’m guessing the vast majority of people reading this are saying no, though we would certainly want to hear from you if you were doing this.  Luckily, the trail breaks down into twenty six segments, and over one hundred individual day trips.  The one I’m interested in is Segment 4: The Forgotten Coast.  It takes you through some of my favorite places.  St. Joseph Bay has clear water and lively seagrass beds and salt marshes.  Many of St. Vincent Island’s most interesting animals aren’t aquatic, but if you look over as you paddle past you might see wild hogs running or even one of those elusive red wolves (not likely, but it doesn’t hurt to look).  Once you pass there, you could choose to either go along St. George Island or stick to the mainland and pass by Apalachicola, where you can try to find a place to land your kayak while you pick up some oysters.

We’ll be kayaking part of this trail for September 14 episode, and talking to Mr. Alderson about it.  Have any of you done this?  Are any of you attempting this, or any section of it, any time in the next month?  We want to know.  We want to see your photos.  We want to watch your videos. Leave a comment below, with links to any videos or photos if you like.  If you’ll be out that way in the next couple of weeks, we may want to interview you.

Leave your comments!

And we want to keep hearing from you.  If you have any ideas for stories we might do related to coastal ecotourism, leave a comment on our Ecotourism North Florida page.

 

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Rob Diaz de Villegas

Rob Diaz de Villegas is a senior producer for WFSU-TV, covering outdoors and ecology. After years of producing the music program OutLoud, Rob found himself in a salt marsh with a camera, and found a new professional calling as well. That project, the National Science Foundation funded "In the Grass, On the Reef," spawned the award winning WFSU Ecology Blog. Now in its tenth year, the Ecology Blog recently wrapped its most ambitious endeavor, the EcoCitizen Project. Rob is married with two young sons, who make a pretty fantastic adventure squad.

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3 comments

Doug Matthews August 22, 2011 - 7:46 pm

Some old, low-res pictures of the Indian Pass to “Little St. George” portion of the Forgotten Coast segment, taken during a paddling & camping trip in May 2003: http://www.flickr.com/photos/rdougmatthews/tags/segment4

Pretty amazing part of the coast, great place for kayak camping.

Rob August 23, 2011 - 3:43 pm

Thanks for sharing these, Doug, it looks like it was a fun trip. I’m looking forward to the St. George portion of our shooting for this segment; aside from a camping trip at the State Park A few years ago, I don’t really get out there much.

Georgia Ackerman September 13, 2011 - 5:38 pm

Hi Rob. We will be doing a two night camp kayak trip from Ochlockonee State Park over to Spring Creek first weekend of October. So, we spend one night at Ochlockonee primitive site and one night at Bald Point primitive camp site. Will take photos. We then bike it back to pick up vehicle. Pedal and paddle adventures are wonderful in this region.
Also Rivertrek kicks of in October. rivertrek11.org

This is a terrific project, keep it coming.
Cheers,
Georgia

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iNaturalist became a part of the WFSU Ecology Blog during the EcoCitizen Project in 2019.  Since then, we’ve used it to help identify the many plants and animals we see on our shoots.  And on the Backyard Blog, we show how it can be used to identify weeds and garden insects, to help figure out what’s beneficial or a possible pest.  Below is the iNaturalist profile belonging to WFSU Ecology producer Rob Diaz de Villegas.

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