I had a chance to take the kayak out on Saturday, something that doesn’t happen nearly often enough. I found a place called Shell Creek that is just outside of Punta Gorda, FL. We found it a few weeks back when looking for a good place to go hiking. The hiking was fairly nonexistent, but there is a boat ramp and what looked like a good place to kayak. Indeed, it is. For some reason it isn’t listed in my kayaking Florida guidebook. The author missed out on some fine kayaking. Starting out from the boat ramp, you can either go toward the lake that is up the creek a ways or go in the other direction, which leads you father away from civilization. We chose to go away from the lake. We were taking a chance by going this way because the creek could easily have narrowed or gotten shallow quickly. We went in this direction to try to avoid the motorized boats as much as possible. We only saw a few small boats with people fishing from them. The creek surprisingly stayed fairly deep for quite a ways. It wouldn’t be an ideal place for a boat with a motor, though, since we did encounter several spots where there was fallen trees just below the water. This is easy enough to pass over with a kayak, but they don’t do much for a motor. Another nice feature of this creek is the lack of alligators. The creek is rather high banked. Alligators tend to prefer bodies of water with plenty of places where they can sun themselves. Alligators aren’t really known for their climbing ability. We only saw one the whole time, and it probably came up from down in the lake. The creek winds back and forth through the Florida countryside. There were a few houses at first, most of them with dock, but only a few of them looked like they got used very much anymore. The houses were soon left behind. The many trees along the banks made for a fairly shady trip, especially after the creek had started to narrow. Naturally, we got caught in a thunderstorm when we were too far out to make it worth trying to get back to avoid it. This tends to be fairly common when you get into hurricane season in Florida, but they seldom last long. We found a location where the trees afforded a pretty decent shelter. It wasn’t perfect, but it did keep us from being poured on. Shell Creek is a place that we plan to return to and try to get further up next time. The best way to see the true beauty of Florida is from somewhere other than the streets. Florida has a lot more to offer than just beaches, theme parks and Spring Break destinations.
