Not...a 3 hour tour...

We have relatives in from Alaska this week & decided to do the long boating trip up to Silver Springs. We've done this trip before, in various boats with various amounts of people. This time in a deck boat (which is like a pontoon but with a hull instead of 2 pontoons) with a 125 HP motor...which cranks along pretty fast. We had 6 3/8 people on board...6 adults, 1 fourteen year old  & 2 doggies. We left the dock around 10 AM for the big adventure.

 

This trip is always a little tricky...you have to go through 2 locks...at Haynes Creek:
 
and on the Oklawaha:

Going up is a piece of cake but coming back...you have to get back downstream before the locks close for the night. If you dilly dally too much at the Spring, you might have to spend the night in a boat with 6 3/8 people. But I digress. We made it up to the Silver River, where Corey & I went for a pee...I mean swim.

 
Cruising around at the Spring I saw the old boat underwater:

The glass bottom boats:

And the poo throwing monkeys....which, according to legend, were left over from a Tarzan movie, escaped from a UF Lab...or spawned directly from Satan, which is what I believe:

On the way back I wanted a pic of Aaron & told him to flex his pecs, which prompted Corey to jokingly call me "Uncle Creepy." When I jokingly replied with a leer in my voice "I'll wait till later to look at this" there was an awkward silence & I felt very creepy indeed:

But on to the big finish. Karan's dad, who I shall call Cap'n Ahab, proceeded to tell us that not only were we probably going to be too late for the locks but also...we were low on gas! Ahab apparently miscalculated that 6 3/8 people hauling ass in a boat for a 100 miles in a day might take more time...and fuel. At this point I stopped taking pictures & concentrated on survival. Now I really was eying Aaron creepily, because being younger & more tender he was the 1st one I was going to eat when we resorted to cannibalism.

So we hauled ass to the 1st lock, warily watching the fuel gauge. We had to scream down the Oklawaha & across Lake Griffin to the entrance to Haynes Creek. At this point in the evening, the nice old people & rednecks were strung out in a line in their boats with their cane poles to catch some dinner. After we nearly swamped the 1st few with our wake, they began yelling "fisherman's courtesy!" which caused Ahab to retort with a sneering "go to hell asshole...we gotta make the lock" as he continued racing down the river to a chorus of cursing & shaking fists.

Making it through the last lock by the skin of our teeth, we were on to the next set of challenges...very low fuel & rapidly fading daylight. Now it's dark...and cold...and windy. Children are whimpering, dogs are whining. I am nearly out of beer. But we make to Lake Eustis! I suggest we hug the shore line in case we run out of gas, the wind would blow us ashore & we could find some help. But Ahab has a steely look in his good eye & continues to plow across the lake at about 1 mile per hour.

Did I mention the wind? We crawled across this lake, in the dark, with about a 4' chop. The sea this night was indeed angry. But Ahab thinks we can make it. We limped into the Dora canal on fumes and somehow miraculously made it back to their dock. I am still not certain if Ahab wasn't seeing the gas gauge clearly or what but who cares...we made it back alive!