Great Calusa Blueways Expedition : Floating on Tribal Tides!!

Raatatatat-Rata-Tatat-Ratatat-Ratatatat-Tatatatat-Ratatatat-Tatatatat-Tatatatatat- (drum roll) – Jeff & Sean are proud to announce an upcoming 2 week paddling expedition to the Great Calusa Blueway Paddling Trail in Lee County, Florida. The trail consists of 190 miles of marked and unmarked canoe/kayak trails located in semi-tropical southwest Florida along the Gulf Coast. Our trip will take us through inland freshwater tributaries, moving down river to a brackish water tidal zone, then out through salt marshes and along mangrove forest lined coasts, on to a fishing village/major watercraft pass. Out to open saltwater and some offshore islands. Along the way we will go through a state aquatic marine preserve, a couple state parks, a national wildlife refuge, a state park preserve, and a few county and regional parks. Then back into fresh water and up a different river to our ending takeout spot.

The trip will take place in September 2011 from the 19th through the 30th, with Oct 1 & 2 as extra paddling/weather days if needed. We will be doing an upcoming series of posts about the expedition and hope our readers will stay tuned as things fall into place and the paddling begins. We have waited on releasing this news due to the fact that there are some really cool things happening behind the scenes: 1. Such as we might have a very well respected paddler & coach possibly joining us for some of the paddle! 2. We might get to tie this into something much bigger- i.e. a teaching opportunity! 3. There just might be a “GOOD” story to come out of all this & MORE!!  DEFINITELY CHECK BACK SOON- for further developments!!!!!!!!!!

Jeff & I will release the first post in the series: Tribal Tides- “Whats a Calusa?” on Wednesday 06/22/11. This post will discuss what and who the Calusa were & why Jeff & I feel so passionate about paddling in their waters. Oh, and how we came to choosing this as our next long distance paddling expedition.

For a little teaser of what the series will cover please check out the previous expedition series: Expedition Planning- there should be 6 posts about the Suwannee River Expedition we did Christmas time of 2009.  Just check under Expeditions or Suwannee River in the side bar categories on the right!

Thanks for reading and following along,

Jeff & Sean