November 26-28 2012 White Springs, Florida

We  made it back to Florida. We are going to boat the Suwanee River.

Welcome to Florida, the Sunshine state. The bus at Stephen C Foster cultural and Folk center state park.

There is this carillon in the park.  Stephen C Foster wrote the song Way down upon de Swanne Ribber. It was adopted as the state song. They say it brings to mind a place that was home and you always long for. He never came to Florida and he never saw the river. He picked the name out of an atlas because it rhymed well with his song. He even shortened it to go well with the song. There is a museum here about him. Also a big crafts center where they teach pottery, blacksmithing, fabric arts, etc. and a big gift shop.

John at Big Shoal park.  big Shoal  is the biggest most challenging  whitewater  in the state of Florida. Practically the only one, since Florida is basically flat. We hiked to check it out before running it.

The Suwannee River is still the black water-dark brown from the decomposing plants and peat.

Where the water is shallower, with something behind it you can see that it is really dark brown, but when it is deep it looks black. Has a mirror like surface that really saturates the colors. The peat filters the water, so it is some of the purist water there is. Rules for being Gator Safe. Basically stay out of their way and leave them alone. Alligators eat smaller prey-they swallow them whole and down here people hunt alligators, so they run see us as predators and run away.

John at Little Shoal rapid. The water is very low, making it barely runnable, but we will anyway. How can we pass up Florida’s only white water. Some roots reflected in the river.

another close up of the cool looking water. And a far back too- it looks almost like black glass.

They are setting up for the Festival of lights for the holidays here in the park. It opens Thursday, we won’t be here,t he park is full for the festival. But we can wander around and look at them, getting a private show. Here is Santa's sleigh taking off for the carillon. I love the way they did the trees. The oak tree branches are covered, and even the palm trees look cool. It is a really great show.

The museum, with an oak in front  lit up. And of course Way Down Upon the Suwannee river.

Too cloudy and cool to run Big Shoal today, so we went to Osceola National forest and the Big Gum Swamp. Osceola is the name of the Seminole chief. We hiked part of the Florida scenic trail, which traverses the state. Mostly we saw long leaf pines and palmettos. This is Florida's most extensive ecosystem, occupying about half of the the total land area. Before white  man arrived there were frequent fires thru here. Florida has the most lightening strikes in the whole world. The fires kept the brush and hardwoods down, so Florida looked mostly like this. Fire suppression has changed the whole habitat. The forest service now does prescribed burns to keep it natural. these long leaf pines are fire resistant and the palmettos can regrow from their roots.

Yellow sunflower, tiny 1/2 inch tree frog, purple seed head, wild bamboo vine with green berries, blue mature berries on the wild bamboo, Spanish bayonet, a type of yucca with frayed leaves, blue berries, yellow st John’s wort and a shed snakeskin.

More of the lights, they are still working on them. The left photo is a detail on an oak tree, looked kind of like modern are. John says he has seen trees like this that were on fire. The Seminole huts at the entrance of the park.