I didn't get skunked

[DanG]

We decided to take a little picnic lunch and go down to the river for a little fishing this afternoon.  We didn't get skunked, because we did catch a couple of little ones. :

The highlight of a visit to Aspalaga Landing, on the Apalachicola River, is the scenery, though.  Behind us was a limestone bluff about 50 feet above us.  We were about 10 feet above the river.




A couple of shots looking downriver:







I hiked a ways along the bluff and got this shot of Linda sitting among the eerie looking old hickory trees.  The erosion of repeated floods has left much of their root systems exposed.  Interesting that they have survived, eh?




Looks like it won't take too many more floods before this grand old Cypress takes a dive. :'(

[Pete J]

Thanks for the photo tour. Can you pinpoint that local on mapquest or google earth? I'd like to zero in on the location for my own geography lesson.

Pete

[DanG]

Easy enough to pinpoint on a roadmap, Pete.   It is on the Apalachicola River, 1/2 mile south of I-10.

[Pete J]

The reference to I-10 was all I needed.

Here's a few links I followed.

A satelite photo showing I-10 and the river.
http://terraserver.microsoft.com/image.aspx?PgSrh:NavLon=-84.90778&PgSrh:NavLat=30.61806

A zoomable map of the area.
http://www.multimap.com/map/browse.cgi?lon=-84.90778&lat=30.61806&scale=100000&icon=x

[DanG]

Neato, Pete!  That complex to the NE is a big rest area along the Interstate.  They built 2 overpasses to get the westbound traffic access to it.  Lots of unnecessary money spent. :-\ The rest area is built on the bluff and overlooks the coastal plain to the south.  You can see a long way from there.  In this little area, if someone just plopped ya down and took off the blindfold, you would never guess you were in Florida.

See that road coming from the south? It ends at a creek, then a trail follows the creek to the boat ramp at the mouth.  Ya have to zoom that Terraserver about 3 times before you can see it.  The pics were taken about 100 yds south of the boat ramp.

[Pete J]

I zoomed in all the way to the parking lot. I think I can see your truck parked over on the side ;D

http://terraserver.microsoft.com/image.aspx?T=1&S=10&Z=16&X=3505&Y=16949&W=1

[SwampDonkey]

Great pics Dang. That's a good sized river and looks deep with alot of swells.

Isn't that Terraserver great?

[DanG]

It is an Inland Waterway maintained by the Corps of Engineers.  They maintain a 12' channel for barge traffic.   There is a good sized hydro-electric dam 6 miles upstream if you care to look on Terraserver.  There are locks there and the barges continue up through Lake Seminole to the port in Bainbridge, Ga.

That aerial photo was taken in a bad drought year and the river was really low.  It's much higher now.

[SwampDonkey]

The Saint John River is designated as a navigatable international waterway. Only thing is there are three hydro electric dams on the main river and no locks. There used to be paddle wheelers running 120 miles upstream in the 19th C. Also, at Grand Falls and the Gorge no ship can pass anyway.

This shows the area of the town above the falls and looking down on the Trans Canada Highway bridge. That now has an additional bridge and has been twinned. The river up there is only half the width as down were I'm at. We don't have a terraserver for Canada, but I get color aerial photo (MrSID or Tiff) images for anywhere in the province for free.

Link

The falls is on the bottom edge of the photo. You can snag a *.tiff or *.sid image from the 3x3 cell table on that page. They are 2.5 meg files. ;) The gorge is a narrow deep channel below the falls, don't know how much that photo shows because it's near the splice of the photo below.

[Blake22]

Hey DanG, ain't that where they catch the 400 pound man-eatin' catfish?

[asy]

Hey DanG, ain't that where they catch the 400 pound man-eatin' catfish?

Blake, ya got it wrong...   It's supposed to be a comma, not a hyphen.

* asy gives a prize to the first person to 'get it'.

asy :D

[SwampDonkey]

 :D :D :D :D

Ya know what they say about idle hands.  :

[DanG]

That guy wasn't there, but there was a 400 pound woman trying to catch a catfish.  Does that count? : ;D :D :D

[pappy]

Grand Falls SD is talking about with a log jamb...circa 1877...

[SwampDonkey]

Using Google-Local I found the house and farm using their very poor satellite imagery. The resolution makes it pretty much useless. If I didn't know what the place looked like on a crisp aerial photo, I'de have a tough time of it. I've seen alot better satellite images, I must add.  :-\