Since I am writing about past kayaking trips..I have begun to realize how many details can be forgotten over time. I kept a manual journal for some adventures and I take pictures practically everywhere I go. If it weren't for the date feature on my photographs I would likely not even remember when some of these trips took place. We bought my Eddyline kayak in 10/2011..not even a year now and it has gotten a lot of mileage! The best I can tell from the dates, the Silver River was the first trip I took in it.
How many monkeys do you spot in this picture? When I zoomed in, I could find 2. I wanted to go to Silver River to see the monkeys. We put in at a park in Ocala..sorry, couldn't tell you what park because I don't remember! That is why going forward I will post all my trips right after they happen instead of a year later! We paddled down this river towards the Silver Springs Park..I do remember that. It was a couple miles of paddling before we spotted the first couple 'posses' of monkeys. It was hilarious. They were screeching and carrying on, running up and down the trees..I wanted to get some good pictures but also kept a safe distance from the banks..especially when we spotted the alpha male.
Admittedly, this trip was quite amazing for me. I mean, how often do you paddle down a river in the US and look up to see groups of monkeys wandering around, chattering with each other, picking bugs out of their hair, eating, and carrying on about their daily lives. The Internet holds all kinds of information on these little monkey's origins. Apparently someone wanted to create a monkey island thinking the monkeys wouldn't swim..many years later.. monkeys now roam wild here. I believe I read somewhere that biologists are concerned with their presence as they are obviously not part of the native food chain. 
We saw two different groups of monkeys on the water and it was fascinating just to sit in our kayaks and observe them. The first set of monkeys was actually divided into two groups, one on each side of the river. They were carrying on at each other and after a few minutes..we noticed several of them running up to the tops of the trees and jumping across the expanse of the river. This was so entertaining to watch. As you see from the picture above, a small monkey did not make it across and we watched him to do smack dive into the water from twenty feet up or so. He was ok and managed to miss the gators..we could've been in for a real National Geographic moment had there been any large ones nearby I suppose. It was really crazy watching a mom with baby attached to her underside jump across..she made it safely.
While I did take literally hundreds of monkey pictures, I am an avid nature lover, especially birds, and I managed to capture some other subjects on the river as well. The gators were relatively small. The one pictured above in the swampy grass was accompanied by three or four more in the background, all about the same size. We probably saw a dozen gators or so the length of the trip. Kayaking in Florida all the time, you lose track of how many gators you have seen on every trip - I can tell you one thing - they aren't endangered in my opinion!
I love the camera my husband bought for me a year ago - a Canon Rebel EOS. I am just a novice photographer but really enjoy it. These pictures were taken with my long lens, which has a great zoom but the quality is not as good as my short lens which has image stabilizer. Also, this was a year ago and I think maybe a year of constantly taking pictures I have gotten a little better. I initially was never going to take the camera out on the water but I see the most amazing things while kayaking so into a dry bag the camera has gone for every trip since.
I really hope to have my family visit me one day so I can share this trip with them. I had pulled a muscle in my shoulder and the trip from the put-in to the Silver Springs attraction and back to the put-in again had me hurting. I am looking forward to going back one day..maybe we will use a shuttle next time.
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