North Star on the Great Loop Journey: Butchers Bend- Black Bear Wilderness area

Preparing for the trip

Captain Jerry has been making the final preparations to North Star, our 32 foot Cape Island down east trawler. We are anxious to leave our landlubber lives behind and begin our long awaited journey around the Great Circle. Join us as we travel 10, 000 kilometers: through the historic Trent Severn Waterway; the pristine waters of Georgian Bay; the North Channel of lake Huron; and hop from beach to beach on lake Michigan. We will visit Chicago and begin our trek along the rivers: Illinois; upper Mississippi; Ohio; Cumberland: Tennessee; Tenn-Tom Waterway and the Black Warrior. We will have transited through 68 locks at this juncture. We have chosen the inner route from Mobile Alabama to Tarpon Springs Florida and the shorter Ocheechobee Waterway to reach the East coast of Florida. We will skip over to the Bahamas to wait out the winter before heading North on the Atlantic Inter Coastal Waterway.
The 10 years of researching and planning are finally at an end and we invite you to come along on our adventure.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Butchers Bend- Black Bear Wilderness area

We continue south on the St. Johns River. We have passed all the hot springs and nice state parks because the weather is not conducive to exploring these today. We will carry on to Sanford tomorrow and stop at the parks on the way back North.
We are anchored at Butchers Bend (N28 51.5 and W81 21.3) which is the old St. Johns river that is bi passed by a strait dredged cut. We saw an alligator as soon as we entered the channel and one is now eyeing me out the port side of the boat. He is not big so he would only take little bites. There are supposed to be lots of Manatee here as well. no mention of black bears even if it is Black Bear Wilderness area.
We finally got a picture of the Limpkin bird we have been looking for. We had to make a u turn to go back and take a picture. It is not a rare bird, it is just that I have never seen one.
It was so dark last night, due to the overcast skies, that we could see hundreds of fireflies in the trees. We also had a few trees that were full of White Ibis. The birds were a little noisy last evening but not overnight.
It rained quite heavily overnight and some this morning, hopefully it will clear up for the rest of the week.