St. Johns River jetski Trip

( This page is finally done, check it out )

Pictures are at bottom of page and on following pages

Last year my bud Dave and I completed a overnight 90 mile roundtrip and had a blast so this year when it came time to plan another trip we decided it had to be more of a challenge then the year before. With this in mind we started planning this years adventure. Since we had already covered the entire length of the river heading north on our last trip the decision was made that this year we would head south on the river with our starting point being the same as the previous year at Julington Creek. We would leave on the morning of 4/23/99 pulling away from the dock at 7:30 A..M. from there we would cross the river to meet up with two more friends of ours Ralph and Randy, who would be waiting our arrival so we could all begin our journey. Everything was starting out just as planned, until we got across the river ! Once we met up with Ralph & Randy we discovered that Randy being a new rider had flooded his ski and it was refusing to start ( oh oh, could this be an omen ), about 30 minutes later after pulling the sparkplugs twice and a couple of dry cranks the engine decided to cooperate and we were on our way, destination, 60 miles south to Welaka, FL. Once we arrived at Welaka after a beautiful, calm two and a half hour ride ( fuel, beer & smoke breaks included ) we would set up camp. This would be our home for the next two nights. We decided that we would explore the local river area for the rest of that day, heading the additional 20 miles south to Silver Glenn Springs the following day. That night we ate dinner at the campgrounds restaurant followed by quite a night of partying with the locals in the on site bar, man what a night. At first the locals were not very receptive towards us but before long our table was covered with beers that they were buying us quicker then we could drink them. All I'll say is we closed the place down and the locals were referring to me as " RECYCLER " ( don't ask ).

The second day we ventured on to Silver Glenn Springs, which is a major partying spot in lake George which is fed by the ST. Johns River. There we hung out for the day checking out the festivities until we were forced to leave since we had to be back at camp before sunset. Once back at camp we again ate and partied at the restaurant / bar.

The following morning we packed and loaded the skis for our journey home. We pulled away from the campgrounds at approximately 11:00 A..M. and headed for Jacksonville. There was only one problem, the beautiful conditions we had for the trip down were no longer with us. Instead of sunshine and calm water we were faced with dark overcast skies and 2 to 3 foot whitecaps on the water, what took us a little over 2 hours the first day ended up taking us 5 hours on this day since we had to slow down to about 15 to 20 mph except for one part of the trip which we were invited to follow behind a 30 foot boat which allowed us to travel at about 30mph. We arrived back at our starting point at 4:00 P.M. on 4/25/99.

The trip back was a rough one but it made the journey more memorable, after all if it was always a piece of cake ( perfect conditions ) everyone would be "dooing" it. We considered the trip a success and all of us are looking forward to the next one. Of course, IT WILL BE LONGER        ( there's another 100 miles of river South of our stopping point ) :)