Chassahowitzka River...... "Piece Of Heaven Here On Earth"

By Ronald Levesque

Page 1 of 3

Can you say chassahowitzka?...It seems that I have trouble with many of the names down here in the south...Names like thonotosassa, chassahowitzka, pithlachascotee, withlacoochee...I'm getting better at it...I have a new rule that seem to work for me. That is...If I can kayak it...Then I can learn to say it. Yes we did get to do our kayak trip to on the Chassahowitzka river pronounced "Chaz-wits-kuh"...meaning "hanging pumpkin"..... Plus I did a nights stay at the campground there and I must say that I think I have seen a bit of heaven right here on earth...I can not say in words how incredible this place is... My friend Bill Pike and I arrived early to the campground... After checking in...it was time to get the kayaks in the water to see first hand this river. The Chassahowitzka river is only three miles long from put in to the gulf of Mexico so you should be able to make it to the gulf and back before the sun begins to fade...But think again!...There is so many springs feeding this river and so many places to explore that you should plan on a number of days of camping and kayaking to see much of this truly wonderful work of God... First of all the Chassahowitzka river is a fisher man or fisher womans paradise...You will see boat after boat heading down and up the river.... Kayaks, canoes, flat bottom boats, air boats.... Its one busy river for sure...Usually when I see this many boats in one place I tend to want to shy away because I like looking and photographing nature and to me...to many people on a river means much of nature tend to shy away as well... luckily for the Chassahowitzka river this is just not so... We literally saw with out exaggeration....Thousands of fish,....hundreds and hundreds of birds, sorry to say that on this trip we did not see any alligators but I'm sure there out there...Did get to see a bald headed eagle swoop down to the river and grab up a good size fish and then fly to the top of a high tree only to devourer it...I tell you that I have never ever seen so many fish in one place in my life.... I'm not sure what kind they where but we got to see more than a hundred of these one type of fish jumping up out of the water in a sideways motion.. all day long. They where doing this right in front of our boats...The first part of the trip we meet up with two very nice folks from the southwest Florida water management district. They where on the river with a small power boat testing the springs and rivers water quality...There where nice enough to lead us right to the first and second in a series of springs near the boat ramp..We got to talk to them for about ten to fifteen minutes and saw first hand there work on the river. I would have to say they have one of the very best jobs in the state of Florida and think I would almost kill to have it...They told us that the springs here on the Chassahowitzka river are made up of many linking underwater caves. The younger swimmers in the area like to dive down into the spring vents...swimming deep underwater from one cave opening and then resurfacing out of the water through another spring. I looked down into a number of the deeper springs from the comfort of my kayak and kind of got the quivers just looking down at them...Trust me!...cave diving is not a sport I will be taking up at my age....

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http://floridacampingtrips.blogspot.com/2005/11/exploring-chassahowitzka-river.html

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