3 Day Overnight Canoe Paddle & Camping on the Suwannee River

Welcome back to the channel everybody. I am in White Springs, Florida which is right off the Suwannee River and today I'm gonna start a three-day canoe float down the Suwannee River. We'll be doing 10 to 15 miles per day and camping at designated camp spots. We are checking in at the canoe place at nine and then we'll start our float and We're gonna have a huge party on this river. We are starting at White Springs at the American Canoe Adventures Outfitter and we're gonna end at the Suwannee River State Park Cabin. We start at mile 170 and we're ending at mile 127.7 so math like 45 almost 50 miles. As we are off we only have a mile drive to where we put in. All right this is where we are gonna put in the canoes and start floating down about 9 48. Look at that water. It's high. Looks like root beer. This is Emmett. As y'all can see this water is so dark. It's so dark. It looks like sweet tea. Here we go. Have you come here before? Yeah a lot. It is supposed to rain storm at two but we have a short first day so we should be at camp about that time. Didn't look like it was gonna rain earlier but it definitely does look like something's blowing in now so we gotta get to paddling. You can see where the water's been. The Suwannee is lined with this really pretty limestone rock you can see and there's really pretty rock formations all along the river caves and stuff like that. Oh this is the abandoned spring. The what? The abandoned spring of White Spring. So this used to be a spring tourist attraction and people would come from all over. There's a sulfur spring and they built this building around it and you could swim in the inside but little spring dried up in 1990 and it's just abandoned now. So here is the inside of the old spring. It still kind of smells like sulfur in here. Probably still some spring water that comes up but not enough for there to be like a pool anymore. So this area used to be a few different levels. You can kind of see where those used to be. All right our first stop is at Stephen Foster Park. I'm gonna get out and pee. It's starting to kind of sprinkle. We're gonna secure some stuff and I'm gonna get like a rain jacket on or something. The main tripod are pirates. Our bandanas. Back on the river we go. Officially raining. Yay. Why did we do this today if we knew it was gonna rain? Float the Suwannee River in a canoe. It'll be fun they said. Raining cats and dogs out here. We're just uh paddling along. Can't do nothing about it. There's the Florida Trail. That's where I hiked last year. Now we're floating the river so it's kind of cool to see where we hiked on the trail last year and then see how different it looks from the water. This was one of my favorite sections of trail and if you are considering doing a section of the Florida Trail I would highly recommend the Suwannee. There's a dead armadillo in that tree. That is so sad. I imagine when the waters came up he just got swept down and got stuck there. Poor guy. R.I.P. Promise I've been paddling it's just I can't paddle and video at the same time. Right tripod? Yes. I've been bellying out the water. You've been doing work. Yeah we got half a beer can. Had to borrow from the guys. There's a bunch of water down there. Keeps getting in the boat. Yeah but at least the rain has temporarily held off a little bit. We're doing good. Have no idea how far in we're at. We are gonna stay at Woods Ferry River Camp. There's supposed to be shelters here, a camp post, showers, the whole nine yards. Excited to get there. Oh we're here. This is our camp for the night. Woods Ferry River Camp. We're at the campsite. There's campsites all along this river because it's a national water trail. A lot of people will through kayak this or canoe this kind of like we do the trails. We're only doing a three-day run but you can be out here for a couple weeks. Take it all the way to the ocean I believe. All right we got all of our stuff. We're gonna go all the way up there with all of our stuff. That's real nice they got the wheelbarrows. Makes life a lot easier. We're gonna load this sucker up. This is our cabin. Can come in camp here. There's lights, electricity, excuse me, fan. Very nice. Everybody's kind of setting up camp. I'm really like wet and cold so I'm gonna go get showering out of the way and then get to making dinner. I feel so much better after taking that shower. I'm warm. It's only two o'clock. We got here super early. Now we're gonna just chill at camp, hang out. So we were going to build a campfire but it's supposed to start storming again at four. We heard thunder earlier so it's kind of too early to make dinner. We're not used to being at camp this early. Normally we're setting up in the dark, night hike in an hour. We're at camp by two. What do you do? So I bought a new camping stove for this trip from Walmart. It comes with this piece, this piece, so you put your propane in there. You buy this separate and then it twists on top. We got chili and hot dogs and we were gonna do the hot dogs over the fire but it's raining and we're hungry and impatient so we're gonna boil hot dogs. I was just letting them sit to warm up. Yeah, yum. Probably not far from it. Boom, dinner, yum. Fire plane. Good morning everybody. Woke up and it is cold. It's in the 40s. Temperature dropped really quickly. Getting all of our stuff packed up, get the boats back in the water and get to paddling. About 18 miles to do today to the next campsite. We are gonna stop at Horton's campsite which is a paddling campsite that we actually stayed at last year on the Florida Trail. Unfortunately, when the hurricane came through this past year, it destroyed most of that campground so they don't have power, they don't have trash, they don't have bathrooms, they don't have really anything. I think they have four of the same kind of little cabins that we stayed in last night. The good news is it's gonna be really warm today, sunny, so no rain. Goodbye Woods Ferry River Camp. We're off on day two. We decided to take a little break on this beach. This is a pretty little place to pull off. I think the trail's up here. I'm on the Florida Trail. Sweet, it goes right through this. Really? This is what Tribod got out and wrote on the beach at Kelly Hayes Heights. All right, Sprinkles and I are swapping. I'm gonna be in the kayak and she's gonna do some canoeing. What is this? It's kind of nice to get best of both worlds. The canoe is like really chill. You're just kind of floating and then the kayak, you know, you do have to do a little bit more work but you're a lot more flexible as far as like where you could go and explore. There's the G-Spot Gazebo. We just got off here and there are some springs up here. It's like a little path where you can go check out the spring. This is Suwannee Springs. There used to be a spring house here established around the time of the Civil War. People used to think that these were healing spring water. There used to be four wooden hotels here in the 1920s, a bathhouse. I guess all the hotels burned down. The last one in 1925. It's really crazy. It feels really good to be walking. We parked our boats down by the spring. We are walking to a gas station that's just a little up the road. I really needed to get some stuff uploaded to YouTube and the gas station ended up having wi-fi. It's times like these I'm really happy I have a VPN and I would like to take a minute to thank the sponsor of today's video Surfshark. Surfshark is a VPN which stands for virtual private network. A VPN can protect your online identity by encrypting the information sent between your device and the internet. As you all know I travel a lot and I am planning a six month through hike this summer which means I'm going to be editing all my videos on my phone and uploading them off my phone using random public wi-fi's or any internet connection that I can find. Connecting your devices to public networks can put you at risk for people spying on your data, malware, and phishing. But you don't have to worry because Surfshark can protect you from all of it and that's why I've been using Surfshark for the past two years. Not only does it give me peace of mind connecting to public wi-fi but it's also helped me save money on flights. For example I'm getting ready to book my flight for my next through hike. Announcing on that coming soon. But normally companies can see that you're looking for flights and they're jack up their prices. I think this has probably happened to all of us. But if you turn on your VPN the flight companies can't track you and you get a lower ticket price. So if you want to upgrade your security game with a VPN Surfshark is a great option. They offer a 30-day money back guarantee so there's no risk in trying it and you can use my code hikes for three months completely free. And now back to our adventure. Here you go. Question. What do you deserve? And there's also a type of bagel. Everything. Oh that was quick. Yeah. She knows her words. What's clever and can fit in your hand? Don't think. Not enough. I'm not seeing it. We just ate lunch. It was a classic gas station lunch. I feel a little after eating that. But anyway we're gonna get back on the river. We got like 10 miles left. We thought we had seven. Somebody else thought we had nine. So we thought we had 12. So we don't really know. But we're gonna just paddle paddle paddle along. We'll get there when we get there. Coats are still here. We had a nice little picnic at the Suwannee Springs. So that was fun. But now we got to get back to work. There's the graffiti bridge. We walked across that on the border trail. We've been enjoying seeing all the cool houses on the river and check out this tree house. That is so cool. Look at that thing. I want to stay there. Didn't even get my feet wet. We're higher. We're at Holton Creek campsite. We'll see what the damage is. He's so happy to be on land. Oh boy. It's steep back here. Let's see what the situation is. Definitely looks like damage has been done here from the hurricane. But for the most part everything is still pretty decently intact. We don't get our fancy wheelbarrows to haul our stuff up here. But there are plenty of spots for us to camp. But this this one's destroyed. Oh wow look at the bathrooms. Oh this is so sad. All right here's our home for the night. We're gonna make hot dogs over the fire. So I found a stick and I'm gonna turn it into a skewer. I'm good. Thank you though. It ain't cold yet. It um. It's smoke. Bubbles. Next we roast a hot dog. Hey Emmett. I don't have any hot dogs for you. I wish I would have brought s'mores stuff. Oh no that's not burnt enough. Oh wait that side is. It's pretty black. Well actually I think I might just eat it. They were day two. That was day one. My hot dog was fire. We gotta go check the potatoes that have been boiling. They might just be ready. Yay. They're purple potatoes so they look a little odd but. It's a potato? Is it potato? Is it? What does it taste like? A potato. It tastes like a potato. Yeah it's a potato. I got sour cream and butter. First time doing this. This doesn't really go with sweet potato but it does for me. It's not even like who wants to pass me off. I like the ravioli too. That's a different color. Don't judge anybody. It's like red velvet cake or something. It's honestly fire. It's so good. There's some cheese. I'm eating a hot dog. I'm just trying to respect. It's a mini pct. The tree is busy. It's a thrill. Yeah it is. Good boy. You're a good boy. I'm going to make an attempt to make some homemade donuts for everybody. So we're going to start out with some oil. Pour it in here. I guess we'll do all of it on here to warm up. For the donuts, we're just going to take biscuits, cinnamon, sugar. All right gotta open the biscuits. I'm scared. Take a biscuit. I'm going to flatten it like this and then like poke a hole in the middle. Then when the oil gets hot, I'll drop that in there. I don't know if these are gonna work. Never done them before but we shall try. They're starting to get browned. Let me show you guys. Here's the homemade donuts. They look pretty good. I gotta try one. Whoa. Everybody come get a donut. They don't bother hot. Oh they're so pretty. Is it good? So good. Yay. Oh these look amazing. Thank you. Thank you. Time to lug everything back down to the boats. We said we were gonna get out at 8 but it was so cold this morning. It got down in the 30s. I stayed warm with my 30 degree z packs. I'm not sure how many miles that we have to the end. We made it. No one died. No one flipped. We made it to the Suwannee River Park. Now we just gotta get all our stuff out and wait for our ride. That was awesome. We did about 13.4 miles today to Suwannee Springs River Park and this is where the canoeing company will come pick us back up. That was an awesome adventure. Thank you guys so much for coming along with. Until next time, thank you guys so much for watching. I will see you on the next one. Bye.