Suwannee River Paddle Dec. 22: Day 8: Zero Day at Fanning Springs State Park

In the morning John and I walked down to Fanning Spring. We saw 5 manatees, including 2 babies! After eating a couple of breakfasts, John and I walked over to Historic Fort Fanning. There were no remnants of the fort remaining and a kind of lame sign that didn’t really delve into the questionable history of Seminole Deportation and the Second Seminole War for which the fort was apparently built.
The predicted rain hadn’t really started by late morning, but came in in the afternoon. I worked on finally updating the blog write ups for the trip. We made a huge lunch and then the kids went to lay down while John and I worked on organizing our supplies and our plan for tomorrow. We decided to get a room at the end of the river at Anderson's Landing since rain is predicted again tomorrow all afternoon and evening. The morning is supposed to be good weather, so we don’t want to waste it by not paddling. My sister plans to come visit us in the evening so we picked out some nonessential items to send with her back to our other car.
We all enjoyed eating lots and resting today. My sister arrived in the evening and we played Cards Against Humanity and ate more. It was a fabulous, restful, and filling day.
Items that have been extraordinarily useful on this trip are: a cell phone on the Verizon network (you have to pay Verizon for your calls to go through if you are on a different network), toilet paper, Suwannee Wilderness Trail Paddling Guide downloaded onto my phone, cash, enough quick cook food for the trip (and lots of it), 3 plastic gallon water jugs with screw top lids (4 would have been better and even more during warmer weather), a quart size camp pot/French press combo, single burner propane stove, raincoats, 55 L dry bags-7 by the company Earth Pak, ropes, waterproof cell phone bags (wish we had a few more of those to put portable power banks in), portable power banks, anker charger, grocery bags, a bright light for the boat at night and for camping, paddling gloves (fingerless and neoprene for wet/cold weather), and a microfiber towel for wiping out the canoe. We wish we had bought a few more dry bags, smaller in size for each person to store their personal day items. Also wish we had downloaded google maps earlier, but we eventually did. We had a camping permit from Suwannee River Water Management District (free- Edwin McCook issued it and he needed 7-10 days to send it out). I could have packed even more trail mix and bars of various kinds, even though at the outset it seemed there would be no way we could eat all of the food we were packing.
It was essential to have someone off the water to help with weather updates and car drop offs etc. My sister, Alee was invaluable on this trip. It was also super helpful to have my dad give us weather updates and phone numbers of potential lodging. I should have brought the phone numbers of all potential lodging.
Throughout the trip we used the Runtastic app to keep track of our miles. Every mile it has a voice coach tell the total miles paddled, total time paddled, and pace for the mile just paddled. It can be paused for shore excursions. It has been super useful to find landmarks. Generally, it is motivating, too. Although I sometimes wondered if it had broken when I felt like I had been paddling forever and no voice coach called out to confirm I had paddled another mile!
No miles paddled.