Feb 26, 2023 Morrison Island to River Forest Loop

Sunday Feb 26, 2023 Morrison Island to River Forest Loop - 20 miles

The day started leisurely. A minor amount of fog wisped across the water but soon dissipated. Waffles and sausage for a late Sunday morning treat. Then a bit of frustration as one of our navigation programs - Aqua Maps - had been acting up. Freezing up and requiring constant reboots. Finally decided to just uninstall it. Which of course means it and all the maps needed to be reinstalled. Just a time-consuming bother. What was odd is the program is still running perfectly on our old redundant tablet. Once done we got a later start than intended, bur since only a 2 hour cruise no worries.

Airboats have start to be a thing around here - quite the noise nuisance.

Martha did the heavy driving again to start the day taking us under the Astor bridge after calling for an opening and past the 4 plus miles of canals that makes every home here waterfront property. And of course each with a boater who wants to be out on the water on this splendid sunny warm weekend day.

Once sufficiently past Astor the landscape turned into the narrow meandering St. Johns backwoods and swamps. This area experienced major flooding last fall after receiving record rainfalls from hurricanes Ian and Nicole. The water has finally receded, but the high-level marks are still visible along the shorelines. The river at Astor is a narrow bottleneck before it enters Lake George so the lands to the south had even higher water and more extensive flooding.

High water marks from the flood still visible on the trees

We stop for the day in River Forest Loop and drop anchor early afternoon. After settling in we splash the dingy and head south to explore. There's a houseboat rental industry in this area so we pass several marinas with them lined up. Pass under the Whitehair Bridge and make our way to Hontoon Island State Park. We have been unable to get any definitive answers regarding staying at their docks and upon arriving we learn it is open for day visits. No overnight stays. They experienced significant damage from the flooding and are still recovering. The day was waning so we headed the 4 miles back to our anchorage. We'll use tomorrow as another day for exploring.

Hontoon Island State Park docks

Sweet picture of As You Wish in the late afternoon sun upon our return

Clouds catching the last rays of sunshine to end our day

Mon. Feb 27, 2023

We had gotten up at 1:15 AM to watch the manned SpaceX launch only to have it scrubbed 2 minutes before ignition. Back to bed. In the morning I dropped the kayak to do a little exploring. Found one nice 8-10 foot gator laying in some water lily's. Took a picture from afar but when I tried cinching up a bit closer, he violently protested with a massive thrashing of his tail and disappeared into the water. Needless to say, I did some quick paddling back to the boat.

He's in between the yellow arrows

Secured the kayak on the boat then took the dingy and retraced our trip down to Hontoon Island for some hiking. Talked with the ranger and learned of the extensive damage they received. Ranger station, ranger house, bathrooms and all the cabins had water intrusion. Much of the grounds have been cleaned up and insides of buildings gutted. Waiting now on contractors to refurbish all the buildings. The more interesting wetlands trail was closed as the boardwalks need fixed or replaced so we took the uplands trail. Probably better for us - wider, flatter, more open. They had done a controlled burn last June and amazing how quickly underbrush has come back. Made it easier to keep an eye out for the snakes.

Good to know we only needed to worry about 3 types of venomous snakes.

Upland trail not the most scenic, but still good exercise getting off the boat

Once done we stopped at Hontoon Marina across the river for some gas for the dingy then back towards the boat and a stop at St Johns River Grille for late lunch/dinner before returning to the boat. Today's rocket launch was at 6:15pm. Another SpaceX rocket. This one with 22 more Starlink satellites. Interesting to see the rocket going up but then also watching the stage 1 rocket contrail returning to land successfully on their offshore barge.