What an interesting morning we had today! We launched the kayaks at the end of Cove Rd. and paddled across the Intracoastal Waterway to the St. Lucie Inlet Preserve State Park on Jupiter Island. We landed at the official kayak spot, paid our user fee, and walked the 3/4 mile long boardwalk to the ocean.
We even went over the bridge that we paddled under several weeks ago when traversing the kayak trail.
Once at the beach, our goal was to walk to the inlet. The only people we saw were a few park rangers picking up garbage that had washed in.
One of the rangers was really funny and apologized for all the people we must have met along the way. We gave him the hilarious Halloween plastic skull we found for the front of his John Deere Gator.
He was also very knowledgeable about the island and the inlet's jetty, which has been damaged and broken up from numerous hurricanes. The jetty is slated to be restored and extended soon. We saw the survey markers in our travels.
The ranger told us how to get to the inside passage road that they use for traveling the island. This included the trail to the keyhole pond off the inlet called "Hole in the Wall," which at one point in history was a fish camp with a now shoaled in entrance from the inlet. We found the path that leads to this shallow body of water. I don't think we could even kayak through it.
We decided to continue for a while on the ranger trail towards the inlet and ended up on a bluff overlooking the water that had been eroding away. This really brought back memories of exploring down at Little Harbour in Abaco, although the cliff wasn't as high.
The trail looked to either end or became very scrubby and grown in, so we turned around for the long trek back to the kayaks, since we only had our Crocs on. Next time we will bring our sneakers and continue as far as possible. This was a great morning exercise work-out with about 4 miles of walking plus paddling before and after!
😎
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