December 9 2012 Alexander Creek, Florida

We ran another spring run today. Alexander Creek. They do not run a shuttle for this one, so we put the boats at the put in, John drove the car to the take out and rode his bike back to the put in. It started out as a really sunny warm day, when we got to the put in it got cloudy, still warm, it got up to 80 degrees, but the sun did not come back out till the second half of the trip. Alexander is wider than Juniper run, had way less tree obstacles, but too many weeds we had to fight our way through. Still a very beautiful creek. 5 miles.

The water is so clear that you can see the water grasses under the surface. John coming to some weed obstacles.

Yellow pond lily flower and Spider lily( amaryllis family)  Both are supposed to bloom in the summer, but they must have been confused. John got this shot of this big gator. He of course goes closer than I will. It slipped into the water after we went by. We saw two more smaller gators later.

The sun came out. In this hammock area there were braided streams again, we had to pick which channel to take, and had to paddle back a couple times to finally get through. Not sure what these big leaves are- about a foot long.

Sue, before the sun came out. I thought I had seen every thing, until I saw this mattress hanging off a bridge. . .

It is hunting season. We passed a bunch of pickups with men sitting in chairs in the back. They send a couple dogs out into the woods to chase the deer back to them while they wait in the truck. We heard dogs barking in the woods while we were boating. A pair of dogs swam across in front of John and took off. We got to the take out and a couple who were swimming there told us they had found two other dogs, they pulled them out of the water before a gator could get them and called the owner to come get them. I guess yesterday a gator got one of his dogs.  Gators like dogs and small children, but leave adults alone.As we were taking out a couple of guys put an outboard boat in, the were going to hunt deer from the creek. They sure hunt different here than they do in the west. I guess because the underbrush is so thick here.