Barr Hammock Nature Preserve

Barr Hammock is an Alachua County Nature Preserve just South of Gainesville, FL. We biked there from Travis' house and rode the 6.5 mile loop around the prairie and marshland.

Suwannee River

Sometimes you can get away with not really planning anything, and your travels will work out anyway. If you've checked out our About page, you will see that Travis has given himself the title Photographer/Planner, which is totally true. So I get to blame him if trips go wrong because of planning. Girlfriend WIN. 

We had been looking forward to November for a long time. Travis and I are both farmers, and not just farmers but community organizers around food issues. And since we both live in Florida, October is a huge month for us. It's the busiest month of the fall growing season, AND there are myriad community events in both Tallahassee and Gainesville. What I was looking forward to was the weekend after my two week work marathon, during which I worked every day. We had set aside that weekend in November to canoe camp on the Suwannee River, with a four day epic trip. Welllll that didn't really happen but we did still have some epic moments. 

We really meant to get off to a good start. Except the night before we didn't get done socializing until 1am... and the next day we woke up late and still had packing and shopping to do... so we started canoeing at 4 pm. As the sun was going down. But whatever. Sometimes you just get too busy to plan everything perfectly and you just do your best, and most of the time that's enough. 

The Suwannee River is a Florida icon. The song is the obvious reason for that: Stephen Foster's "Old Folks at Home" is Florida's State Song, and most of us learned the first verse and chorus growing up (Way down upon the Suwannee River, far far away...). There's a reason we stuck to the first verse, because the rest of the original lyrics are EXTREMELY problematic-- the song was written for a blackface minstrel group in New York. Also, Foster never saw the Suwannee, nor did he ever even visit Florida, he just liked the way Suwannee sounded in the lyrics. So, like many parts of our terrible history that we've glossed over and continue to celebrate, "Old Folks at Home" remains with us, we just ignore the bad parts.

The Suwannee River, however, is not terrible. It is great. Its source is the Okefenokee Swamp in Southern Georgia, which sprawls over 438,000 acres. Most of the water accumulated there eventually ends up in the Gulf of Mexico, and the Suwannee River is one of the ways it travels there. Its also one of the few major rivers in the US that hasn't been dammed up and still flows as it has for thousands of years.

In addition to the Okefenokee, the Suwannee is also fed by hundreds of springs along the way, which gurgle up to the surface from the Floridan Aquifer. 150 billion gallons of rain fall in Florida every day, and a lot of that ends up in the aquifer-- a system of underground rivers that flow through the porous limestone under our feet. The aquifer is closest to the ground surface in North Central Florida, which is why there are more springs there than any other part of the state.  

We get our drinking water from the aquifer. We use 7 billion gallons of water a day in Florida, and not just for drinking. One of the more depressing facts I learned while researching this is that nearly 50% of the water designated for public use goes to watering our lawns. It's 900 million gallons a day. That makes my blood boil. Our aquifer is being overpumped, and the springs are paying for it. Many springs around the state are turning saline, which is bad news for the ecosystems, obviously, but also for the humans who rely on that water to live. Each Floridian uses an average of 150 gallons of water per day, 50 gallons more than other Americans. Turn off those lawn sprinklers, folks. We're going to have a very real water crisis on our hands in the next few decades.

Farming and industry use up a large portion of those 7 billion gallons, like the PotashCorps phosphate mine in White Springs that was built in the 70s. White Springs was the launch point of our journey, and it was also Florida's very first tourist destination. From the 1880s-1930s, the sulfur water gushing out of the springs was touted as a cure all, from nervous disorders to indigestion. Thousands of Northern tourists stayed at White Springs' 14 luxury hotels, and a four-story bath house was built around the spring for greater access. Now, the spring doesn't release any water at all, except after a heavy rain. It's a ruin of what it once was, and it's a lesson for what's to become of our water future.

Photo from the Tampa Tribune

All that being said, it just makes the magic of the springs that much more precious. Sometimes springs are the head of a river, like the Wakulla or the Ichetucknee-- pumping out millions of gallons of water enough to feed a flow all the way to the ocean. Sometimes, springs pop up in the middle of the woods where the limestone below the ground has been eroded away by the flow of the aquifer, and a sinkhole opens up. This is one of the most incredible sights in Florida: after walking through the woods for a half hour, you come up on a clearing with a clear blue gem at the center, full of fresh, clear, cold water to swim in. 

From another Suwannee trip Travis took earlier in the Fall with his roommate Brian

Sometimes, the spring bubbles up right alongside a river, and that's how it is with the Suwannee. There are 197 springs that feed the Suwannee during its 245 mile journey from Georgia to the Gulf. The treat of coming across one down the river means discovering a bright blue swimming hole with water gushing out, in contrast to the dark, tannic waters of the easy-going river. The water pressure is surreal-- the invisible force of the water pumping pushes you out into the main flow of the river. Definitely have to tie up your canoe.

Canoe camping is different from other camping because you have the added difficulty of figuring out how to connect your boat with your vehicle when you are ready to go home. We decided to bring bikes in the truck and park them at Suwannee Springs, our end destination, where we would tie up the canoe and then bike back to the start where we left the truck. Well, that was the plan anyway.

It was when we finally reached the rivers' edge, lowered the canoe from off the truck and emptied the truck of our camping gear, that Travis realized that he had forgotten his bag of clothes. It was supposed to get down in the 40s. Well. At least that justified a trip into the gift shop at the Stephen Foster Folk Cultural Center State Park, which was full up of cheesy country crafts and T-shirts but no sweatshirts. Luckily I brought two jackets and we are roughly the same size. We scurried back to the canoe to finally start paddling, cracked open some Jai alai IPAs, and watched the waning sunlight filter through the trees.

The Suwannee marks the prehistoric boundary where the Florida peninsula was cut off from the Panhandle to form an island. The woods surrounding the river are typical hardwoods, but the embankment is white sugar sand, a leftover from the area's underwater days. This makes for easy camping, and so after a few river bends we pulled over on a flat sandy shore to get started cooking before dark. 

We're pros at setting up camp now, after doing it almost every night for a month during our last extended trip. We can do it almost wordlessly. We got to gathering firewood, which was abundant with all the dried fallen saplings scattered along the rivers' edge. Soon we had a nice little fire crackling, and we had the treat of real campfire food-- baked beans and hot dogs. I really love baked beans and hot dogs. It was basically perfect. The weather was cool but not freezing, somehow there were no mosquitoes, and just enough Florida fall color was showing in the cypresses. And it's all just an hour from Travis' house, that's the most amazing part.

During his excursion into the gift shop back at the park, the historian in Travis couldn't help but purchase some light reading for the evening: Cracker Culture in Florida History by Dana M. Ste. Claire. He read it aloud to me while I tended the fire. As dry and academic as the writing was, the riotous content made up for it. "Cracker" is a term that has been used to describe poor whites for a couple hundred years, specifically in Georgia and Florida. Though the exact definition of a cracker is hard to pin down, what we are clear on is that everyone hated them. "quote" Coming from Scottish and Irish stock, crackers roamed the far reaches of the Florida wilderness, building homesteads without inquiring who owned the land they built their houses on, drank whiskey with enthusiasm, and settled skirmishes with duels. They probably had the best parties in the state. Also, a really great beer is named after them. It's a white ale. Get it??

We woke up later than we should have the next morning, but it's hard to want to stay on a schedule on a Sunday. It usually takes about an hour to wake up, eat breakfast, and pack, so we were on the river by 10:30am. Let the paddling begin!

This part of the river was so rad. We would come around the bend and it looked totally different. Some parts were typical Florida riverside, with overhanging trees and knotted vines. In one section the embankment was totally worn away to expose the bare, holey limestone underneath. There were little creeks rushing down to meet the main river, and we parked the canoe a couple of times to follow them upstream for a bit. I couldn't have asked for more perfect weather.

At lunch, reality set in that we had started canoeing way too late to make it back to where we parked our bikes before dark. We stopped off to eat at one of the many canoe campsites along the river, and called American Canoe Adventures outfitter back in White Springs. Luckily, he could pick us up at Suwannee Springs right before sunset and bring us back to the truck. This is one more reason we should be thankful when the Technology Gods make up for poor planning. We would have been screwed without our cell phones.

So next time, we'll know. If you're planning an epic weekend, pick a solid plan. Make sure you have all your gear. Don't underestimate how long traveling takes, either by bike or by water. Wake up early. Charge your cell phone. I'm stoked to try canoe camping again-- that was my first time after all. AND, after this trip we know how easily it is to factor in canoeing to our 2014 bike tour on the West Coast. The packing and gear are identical, and if we hire an outfitter to bring us our bikes when they come to pick up the rented canoe, we won't lose any mileage.

So Willamette River, here we come!

Crystal River

Those of you who are not from Florida probably have your own idea of what my state is like-- beaches, palm trees, face-eating drug addicts, and whatever other crazy reports John Stewart has relayed to you. But the Florida that I love is a very different place.

My beloved Florida covers the land of the panhandle to North Central Florida, specifically the area between Tallahassee and Gainesville. Tallahassee is the geological tail of the Appalachian Mountains, and our big hills, tall pine trees and red clay soil are not what people expect out of the state. As you approach Gainesville, Florida's swampy nature emerges, and the habitat becomes dotted with palmettos, flat marsh prairies, a network of springfed rivers bubble up through the woods, connecting aboveground flows with underwater aquifers.

It’s here that we find the Florida Manatee.

I don’t think you realize how exciting it is to see a manatee. First of all, they are huge. They are 8 feet long. Sometimes they are 10 feet long. Sometimes they are three feet long, and that is when they are babies. Second of all, they are extremely cute, with their little faces and their flippers and their snouts that poke up above the water. Third of all, it is novel to see something that lives underwater most of the time. It is like stumbling across the inhabitant of another world. A very wet world that we can never be a part of. Fourth of all, how could you not be excited to see the animal that inspired a meme like this.

Manatees spend almost all day eating, and their lifestyles and habits are dictated by the fact that they can eat up to 15% of their body weight each day. That’s 150 lbs of plant material each day. They spend the warm summers traversing the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic in search of fodder, and in the winters they head to the rivers, swimming upstream to the springs. Groundwater temperature in Florida hovers around 70 degrees, and the closer the manatees can get to the source of the river, the warmer they will be-- they cannot survive in water temperatures below 68 degrees.

Thus begins the great Winter Manatee Migration. There are four subpopulations of manatees that flock to different areas of the state to huddle together in the springs in October through March, and it’s the best time of the year to see them. These dudes have their spots picked, and they return year after year to enjoy the warmth and food provided by the springs. However, as soon as their journey upriver begins, life becomes a lot more dangerous.

Manatees are slow movers. They’re big, for one thing. The average manatee weighs about a ton. And they are really focused on eating. One hundred and fifty pounds of plants a day, remember? So they’re pretty busy when jackasses on speeding motorboats zip through the tranquil river waters. Of the 392 manatees reported dead in 2012, 80 of them were killed by motorboats. When I was a little girl, the Florida Governor and Cabinet approved a series of Manatee Protection Plans which limited motorboat speed and activity in rivers where manatees are known to swim, and designated manatee protection zones areas where they overwinter. Nowadays you can see signs all over high traffic rivers proclaiming No Wake Zones, and awareness about manatees seems ubiquitous in those areas. The Save the Manatee Club has done invaluable work by providing said signs, as well as compiling helpful information about manatees, running the Adopt-A-Manatee program, and lobbying for support of manatees and their habitat.

Despite these turnarounds, in 2013 the manatee death toll is higher than ever recorded-- 769 were reported dead in November. Many of them died in a red tide bloom in the Indian River Lagoon after the Army Corps of Engineers dumped stormwater laced with fertilizer into Lake Okeechobee. Red tide is a deadly proliferation of algae that overtakes fresh and saltwater bodies. Algae becomes a problem when water is oversaturated with nutrients-- nutrients like chemical fertilizers that are dumped by the ton on Florida’s agricultural lands. In the Indian River Lagoon alone, 111 manatees died due to this pollution.

Time to really get on a high horse now: this is why organic food is important folks. The chemicals that are used to grow the vast majority of the world’s food supply are toxic, and they cause deadly implications in delicate ecological systems. Florida is a huge ag state, and all of the runoff from conventional farms flows right where it’s where it’s always flowed for millennia- right into our waterways. This is why my farm is organic. This is why you should by buying organic food. It’s important y’all.

In any case. This year I enacted Manatee Count 2013/14. I am big into spreadsheets. One time, I made a spreadsheet for all of the fun summer things I wanted to accomplish, like canoeing all the rivers and making jam out of all the fruit. Another time, I made a spreadsheet of all the different kinds of ice cream I wanted to make, like fig with candied bacon and blackberry peppercorn (I did not make it too far through this spreadsheet because the rate of ice cream consumption in my house grew to outrageous proportions). Manatee Count is a spreadsheet that keeps track of how many manatees I see and where I saw them. I am serious about my spreadsheets. It’s a Type A characteristic that keeps surprising me as I get older.

I did some research (correction: Travis did some research). Turns out one of the large manatee subpopulations hangs out all winter at the springs that feed Crystal River. I’d never been to Crystal River. Travis had never been to Crystal River. Also, turns out that Travis’ friend Brendan was in Orlando for a conference in October. Travis, Brendan and I all went to college together, and Brendan now lives in Philly so he’s not down South very often. He also brought his girlfriend Ann Marie, who is from Pennsylvania and hasn’t spend a ton of time in Florida. A plan was hatched. Time to kayak Crystal River.

We arrived on a beautiful day in early October. For those of you not from Florida, Autumn means something totally different for us than it does in the rest of the country. Fall means you can go outside again without immediate discomfort caused by heat and insects. It means the humidity percentage drops by half, and that you can go swimming AND have a bonfire on the same day. It was perfect for kayaking. That’s what I’m trying to say.

We pulled up to Captain Mike’s Sunshine River Tours near Pete’s Pier, which puts you right into King’s Bay. King’s Bay is the mouth of the Crystal River, which continues on to flow into the Gulf. It’s been weirdly developed to make it seem like a waterpark lazy river ride. Remember, this Florida is further South than I am accustomed to. You say “kayak on a river” and I picture water grass, overhanging cypress branches, snakes, alligators. This river has been domesticated so that the edges of the river is cemented and the lawns of the luxury waterfront homes butt up to the water’s edge. Lots of old people. Lots of boats. And also manatees.

We rented our two tandem kayaks and set off with the map provided by the kayak rental. Three Sisters Spring was first stop. We all paddled up the main channel for a bit, ducked under a bridge and came upon the spring. It’s tucked off to the side with a narrow canal entranceway that was clogged with lots of other kayakers with our same idea. The spring itself is not that big. It’s the size of an olympic swimming pool. A crystal clear, sandy bottomed, beautiful swimming pool. There were about 25 of people there, tourists in canoes and kayaks, and Manatee Watch volunteers in yellow vests stationed in their own vessels to make sure no assholes were jumping in the water trying to ride the manatee.

Yes, manatee singular. There was one big dude in there chilling, it looked like he was asleep. But you know what? This was my first chance in my life to go swimming with a manatee. Up until now I had only seen them from the river tours at Wakulla Springs, and there’s no swimming allowed in that instance. Incidentally, I had just taken the Wakulla Springs river boat tour a couple weeks before and saw seven manatees, so this big guy brought my count up to eight. We docked our boats on some cypress knees, slipped into the water (72 degrees still feels pretty cold) and swam up close. Luckily, Travis brought his masks, and we all took turns looking at the big guy even though he didn’t seem at all interested in us. It was pretty awesome.

We heard rumors from one of the Manatee Watch volunteers that there was a mother and calf swimming up near Hunters Spring, so we spun the kayaks around and headed North. We passed a few tour boats with folks in wet suits craning their neck over the side of the boat, so we knew we were on the right track. And there, right in the middle of this cemented river was a mama and baby just munching away on river roughage. We swam up pretty close to get a good look, but followed the rules and didn’t harass them or touch them.

Crystal River has built an interesting tourist economy focused on these manatees. There are multiple companies offering kayak rentals and manatee and scallop tours. It’s interesting to see this area capitalizing on natural resources instead of bulldozing it all to build riverside strip malls. Granted, Crystal River is by no means wilderness, but it’s a far cry from South Florida’s Everglades draining and endless suburbia. We paddled down toward the Southern end of the bay in search of more manatees at King Spring, and on the way passed the Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge. It gave us a glimpse of what that area looked like 150 years ago, when the fear of yellow fever kept enterprising Yankees from developing Florida’s wild springs into vacation resorts. It was quieter down there. Most of the boat traffic was interested in the Northern part of the bay, and the hum of motors and belting country music was limited to the distance.

Sable palms still towered over the two or three small islands designated to be a preserve; tall grasses snaked out from the land to greet the water in a marshy carpet, and great white herons made use of the sanctuary to catch their daily meal. It was peaceful. I wish the preserve covered more than three islands.

Turns out early October is still a little early to catch lots and lots of manatees, and the Manatee Count stayed at 10 for that day. By mid-October, the rules for the springs change-- people are still allowed to kayak into the springs but no one is allowed to leave the boat because there are just too many manatees everywhere. Those rules stay in play until mid-March, when the rivers and ocean warm up enough that the springs aren’t a life or death necessity. There were probably lots of manatees swimming up and down the river, but the water isn’t clear and the river is so wide we didn’t see anymore. Luckily, manatee season is still well underway, and the Manatee Count 2013/14 spreadsheet still has plenty of cells to be filled.

Denver, City of Cute Dogs and Weed

So now that I got all my end of the world complaining out of my system, let’s talk about Denver. I can see why people move from all over the country to live there.

1. Surrounded by mountains

2. Great weather

3. Cool things to spend money on, like:

   Food (gourmet strawberry Pop Tart)

Coffee (look at all the twisty drip action)

DIY shit (colorful ramekins)

(cutest measuring spoons)

Super bike friendly (motor vehicle-free bike paths that cut through the middle of town)

We stayed with Clint in a two-story house that used to be a church. It was right across the street from Section 8 housing, and the convenience store across the street got tagged big time the first night we stayed there. That being said, it was still a friendly little neighborhood and felt safe enough. Clint lives with four other early twenty-somethings, all of them from Florida. I think all of them are from Palmetto, actually. That’s the town Travis and Clint grew up in, just south of Tampa. And let me tell you, these kids are repping Florida pretty damn hard. Those shorts!

To my great happiness, there were three adorable animals residing in this house: Professor McGonagall, Luna, and Roxy. The Professor was a cat and spent her time outside challenging squirrels to deathly fence-walking face-offs. Luna is quite possibly the cutest dog we met on the trip, and she was the perfect size and expert cuddler.

Then there was Roxy.

Roxy was a rescue dog and still had issues. She barked maniacally when anyone entered the house, even the people who had lived with her for years. We soon discovered, however, that the best way to make Roxy’s attentions toward you turn favorable was to start petting Luna. Then Roxy would just leap up in your lap no problem. Not gonna lie, I empathize with the small neurotic dogs most.

Two of the housemates work at Starbucks, which turns the fridge, countertops, and coffee area into a home Starbucks bistro. Need that morning pick-me-up? Each of them gets a pound of coffee to take home every week. Return from the bar feeling peckish? It’s cool, would you like a brownie, a cheese danish, or scones? Can’t figure out what you want for a mid-day snack? You have regular and greek yogurt parfaits to choose from.

One more thing about this house. These kids smoke weed. Like they reeeeally smoke weed. Like when you turn on Netflix on the flat screen you have the push three bongs out of the way. Like every morning is a wake and bake kind of morning. Like I even learned about a new way to smoke weed.

Doing “dabs” is a way to smoke a bowl’s worth of THC in one hit. You buy this weed oil… I don’t know what it’s called or where you get it. Then you get this special bong bowl and heat it up with a crème brulee torch till it’s glowing red hot. Then you use a metal instrument to dab the weed oil into the glowing bowl and inhale. These veteran stoners told us sometimes it’s better to do this at night because you may as well plan on being stoned for the next 8 hours. These kids get so excited about dabs that they started chanting and clapping their hands about it when Taylor suggested that’s how they spend their Friday afternoon. “Dabs! Dabs! Dabs!” Apparently, dabs are the bomb.

So that’s one thing about this legal marijuana thing. Weed is very high quality, easy to obtain, and cheap. You can buy it for about half the price as you would in other places. But luckily, marijuana isn’t the kind of drug that makes you want to hit your girlfriend (alcohol) or allows for easy overdose (prescription drugs). Clint’s roommates all have jobs, even jobs that require them to be at work at 3am and 6am. Colorado is opening up huge tax revenues with their legal dispensaries. Marijuana bought legally is taxed 25%, and is only bought from certified producers, which are highly regulated. Not that the black market isn’t alive and well, but as I said, everyone still seems to be functioning.