The Best Ride In Florida isn’t in an Amusement Park

Every once in a while you get lucky. Maybe it’s when you are looking for a place to spend the night and you find a beautiful park that you had never visited. Maybe it’s a fish or a pretty rock, yeah I know what you are thinking, “He needs a life.” Or maybe it’s just that you catch everything just right like today when we caught an incoming tide.

Sitting in the fifth wheel we realized that November was already gone, (and it went as fast as time does for retired people), and here we hadn’t been kayaking. So today was supposed to be in the eighties and one of our favorite places to paddle was only fifteen minutes away.

As I loaded the kayaks and gear Renita was busy packing our lunch, cameras and, dry stuff into our waterproof bags. Half an hour later we were on the water and she told me that she had looked up the tides. Low tide had been at eight thirty and the tide was coming in, so we hoped we could enter the black mangrove tunnels.

As we entered the small lake, sign post number three was being guarded by a rosette spoonbill, a double crested cormorant and a Louisiana/Tricolor heron. They seemed a little upset that we were bothering them during their afternoon siesta but as a paddled past they simply turned and watched me go bye before posing for Renita’s camera.

We knew that we had gotten lucky as the shallowest spot of the tunnels is at that spot and we were even luckier as the tide was rising and flowing into the tunnel’s mouth. It wasn’t very fast but it was rising and so Renita and I were both again riding the tide through the tunnels at Wheeden Island.

At places the tunnels narrowed and the mangroves closed in but we only had to occasionally grab a branch and push off as we silently glided by. Small mangrove crabs turned toward us and warned us of their might by holding out a large orange claw.

American Ibis skittered back and forth in the low bushes before leaving their perches to walk away from the danger they felt we represented. Taking turns leading the way I got caught sideways and Renita soon drifted out of sight, but she stopped at the next tunnel entrance and I soon caught up.

Passing by the ninth signpost the tide was now against us and so we had to paddle our way through. It still was easy going as it wasn’t rushing in and so we moved quickly against it by keeping a steady rhythm, left and right and left and right.

Finding an overhanging tree we tied off and stopped for lunch. A solo paddler in a canoe went by and then a fisherman casting as he/she peddled a Hobie kayak. I had long since put my pole way, for me anyway it was too nice a day to be bothered by fish during our tunnel travel.

Finishing lunch we moved from shaded tunnel to open water and then back again and now the heat of the afternoon made the tunnels a welcome relief. Too soon we left the last tunnel and now two long open water stretches awaited us. The wind picked up a little, as if to say that our tunnel riding had been too easy. Still the kayaks moved swiftly into the wind as we both found our kayak’s easy rhythm.

The last open water stretch was behind us and only a couple of turns were left until we reached the takeout point. I count the tunnels as an old friend and for a while we both had been transported into a special place, a place without traffic jams and crowds of people, a place of peace. The best ride in Florida isn't in an amusement park but riding through the black mangrove tunnels at Wheeden Island. Clear skies.