Darkness is no detour when adventure kayakers have dinner on the brain, and this trip finishes fast.
By TERRY TOMALIN
Published December 25, 2003
[Times photo: Terry Tomalin]
Kayakers prepare to cross Lake Monroe, a body of water known for large waves in a north wind.
PUZZLE LAKE - By 2 a.m. the temperature had dropped and scattered the mosquitoes.
"Who's up?" Jon Willis asked.
"I am," I said.
"Me too," Casey LaLomia said.
George Stovall, the most experienced member of our party, already was getting dressed.
"We might finish tonight," he said. "I feel like a steak."
We had left the boat ramp near Melbourne on Wednesday evening, hoping to paddle the 120 miles to Blue Springs by Sunday. But talk of an impending cold front rolling in from the north prompted us to change plans.
The Seminoles called the St. Johns Welaka, which means River of Lakes. From its headwaters in the marshes of Central Florida to its terminus at the Atlantic Ocean near Jacksonville, the St. Johns runs through a series of large lakes that can be as rough as inland seas when the wind blows.
Besides being one of only three rivers in the United States that flows south to north, the St. Johns is unusual because of its heavy tidal influence.
Lake Washington, which lies more than 200 miles from the Atlantic, has a resident population of Southern stingrays, which injure many swimmers along Gulf beaches. Tarpon and redfish, two more saltwater species, have been caught as far inland as Sanford's Lake Monroe, which has a particularly bad reputation in rough weather.
Our goal for the second 24 hours of our journey was simply to get across Lake Monroe before the storm hit. But first we had to find our way across Puzzle Lake, a maze of twisted channels and floating islands.
Many a traveler, including the novelist Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings of The Yearling fame, has gotten lost trying to cross Puzzle Lake. The lake is confusing in daylight; we would try to find our way at night.
But most previous explorers didn't have a global positioning system receiver, or Jon Willis. The 44-year-old has served as our navigator on numerous expeditions. The key to any successful adventure is preparation. It also pays to take talented people.
Willis, a charter captain, has a talent for maps. Stovall, 60, was the oldest member of our party and the most experienced. Darry Jackson, 55, an outdoor retailer, was our equipment expert. LaLomia, 33, had a strong back and steady hand, valuable attributes in an emergency situation.
"What's your specialty?" Jackson asked as we paddled through the darkness.
"Knives," I told him.
"Bet you like fires, too," he said.
"Yes," I confessed.
Indeed, one of my favorite things about venturing into the wild is pretending that I am an explorer seeing terrain for the first time. But as we paddled down yet another dead-end slough I was glad we had the help of satellite technology.
"We need to be somewhere over there," Willis said. "But how we get there, I don't know."
The current at this point of the river (or lake) hardly was visible. Farther downstream, however, where the St. Johns is several miles wide, there is no mistaking which way the water flows. Spanish conquistadores called the St. Johns Rio de Corrientes, or River of Currents.
But floating in foot-deep water in the middle of nowhere, we thought for a moment we might have to wait until morning to find our way through.
"Let's try this way," Willis said. "Just trust me."
All we could do was trust our navigator, who had spent weeks entering more than 250 waypoints in his hand-held GPS. Trying to follow a shallow, unmarked channel in the dark isn't easy. If Willis was off by one decimal point we could be lost for hours and lose the time we gained the previous day.
But after three hours of snaking in and out of floating islands, we saw headlights as cars drove along State Road 46. Just before dawn we pulled over at a boat ramp beneath the bridge: It had taken three hours to cover 4 miles.
"You paddled across Puzzle Lake in the dark?" asked a fishermen about to fire up the engine on his bass boat. "You're lucky you didn't get lost."
He asked how far we were going and, when we told him all the way to Blue Springs, he warned us about crossing Lake Monroe.
Big waves. Even bigger gators. Yes, we had heard it before.
With the sun came renewed vigor. It was obvious as we powered across Lake Harney we were entering a new part of the river. The low lying marshes and wet prairies were gone. The river north of Harney had a defined channel, and the scrub land gave way to hardwood high ground.
A pair of bald eagles moved along the river ahead of us, and one of them dove into a field and emerged carrying a large snake. Hawks, kites, kingfishers and every wading bird imaginable were spotted at one point or another along the banks.
We passed the remnants of an old wharf, perhaps a dock used by one of the hundreds of steam paddle wheelers that once traveled the river, then pulled in at Mullet Lake Park to put on foul-weather gear as a storm gathered on the horizon.
The river twisted and turned in a series of oxbows. We bypassed a channel that led to Lake Jessup, which according to locals has one of the densest alligator populations in Florida, and wound up at the entrance to Lake Monroe far earlier than anticipated.
Lake Monroe is roughly 5 miles wide and 5 miles long. To re-enter the river on the other side, we would have to paddle the most exposed section of the lake along the shore by Sanford.
"The shortest route is straight across," Willis said. "But that doesn't leave us much shelter if it gets nasty."
After hours of traveling along a narrow river, where every twist and turn may hold a surprise, the prospect of crossing a big, empty lake is very unappealing.
"I hate lakes," Stovall said. "They are so boring."
Get it over as quickly as possible, we all thought, and with that we set out and raced across Lake Monroe. We moved quickly, 5 mph. Three-quarters of the way across a pair of offshore powerboats whizzed by, covering the distance in a matter of minutes that had taken us nearly an hour.
Safely across Lake Monroe, we pulled into shore beneath some power lines to grab a snack and check the map.
"You know, we only have 12 miles to go," I told my friends. "If we push it we could finish by 6:30."
I thought "48 Hours on the St. Johns" had a nice ring to it. My companions agreed.
Three hours later we arrived at Blue Springs State Park, just in time to watch a pair of manatees swim into the sheltered run where they would spend the night. We had covered 112 miles, nearly half the length of the river, in two days.
