Smell Like Dirt

In Spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.” Margaret Atwood

Archive for Springs

The Santa Fe River

Last October, we spent a week in North Florida kayaking the Ichetucknee River filming the amazing wildlife there (see video at right).  And while we were there, we took a day and kayaked about 10 miles of the Santa Fe River.  The Santa Fe is longer and wider than the Itch so you see some different wildlife, most notably, alligators!  We only saw two on this trip.  The Santa Fe has a unique characteristic in that it disappears at the O’Leno State Park and flows underground about three miles before it re-emerges.  We launched downstream of the River Rise Park where it comes back above ground. Although O’leno is something you should visit at least once, we did not visit there this trip. The area where the river flows underground looks like a large pond and is filled with all the trash that ignorant litterbugs throw into the river, which is sad to see.  There were about a dozen springs along the stretch that we kayaked.  It started out as a cool fall day, but warmed up during the trip which took about 6 hours (lots of wildlife viewing slowed us down!).  I hope you will enjoy this video of our adventures.  Special thanks to Lauri Shubert, our best kayaking buddy, for the still photographs used in this vid.  She does an amazing job of getting great stills of the flora and fauna on our trips.

Pileated Woodpeckers

Another video from our recent Smell Like Dirt Takes a Road Trip to the Ichetucknee Springs State Park in North Florida. We got lucky and stumbled upon a pair of Pileated Woodpeckers who were too focused on looking for food to care about us filming them. Pileated Woodpeckers can be found across the Eastern United States so most of us have a great chance to see them. Find a large forested area near you and see if you can find some for yourself. They are very loud so chances are you will hear them before you see them.

Special thanks to Lauri Shubert of Lake City, Florida, for letting us use the still photos of a male pileated working on a tree in her own backyard. Lauri definitely Smells Like Dirt!