Friday Field Trip- Sept 16th

Finally tried paddleboarding!

Bruce and I made reservations for paddleboarding for Friday afternoon.  They would meet you at Jesse's Restaurant at Magnolia Springs with the boards and you could have them for 4 hours to paddle up and down the river.  My link to Magnolia Springs has a loop of pictures and a couple of them are where we paddled.

Sounded like lots of fun.  The only things making me nervous were a) falling off and b) snakes. 

I had crossed the alligator off the list since I had never heard of any in this river nor seen any for that matter.  I almost decided to get kayaks instead, but really wanting to try paddleboarding we decided to brave it. When asked if there were snakes, our guide did smile and say "well, yes, they are around but I have only seen 1 in the water while paddling."  You might think that this would heighten my anxiety, but it did just the opposite.  The odds were against me seeing any! Yay!


Our guide helped place the boards into the river and gave us a water tight box to attach to the end of the board with cell phone and keys.  We took life jackets, but never put them on.  He suggested we start on our knees and then stand up when ready.  It was such fun! 

So peaceful on the river and the boards went smoothly along.  We saw  turtles, both on logs and swimming,  jumping fish,

and a beautiful blue heron repeatedly on our 3 hour long excursion.

We did get some slight waves from a motorboat with water skiers and one time we were already down on our knees taking a break.  The other time, we were standing up and Bruce made for the knees pretty quickly.  I was going to try standing through it all- see how my balance was- but then I got nervous and also got down.

I will definitely go again and who knows might buy some boards.  Here are the pictures we took, being careful not to lose the cell in the murky waters!  Lol:)