Bring bon-bons, lights, and boats to
Banks Lake, just west of Lakeland, Georgia,
7PM Saturday
August 29th 2015
for the first WWALS Moonlight Paddle and Bon-Bon Eating Contest. Your host, Chris Mericle, has arranged a special after-hours permit for this outing. Join us at
Banks Lake Outdoors,
1099 W Main St.,
Lakeland, GA 31635.
This is part of our continuing exploration of the Alapaha River Water Trail. Printable PDF flyer. facebook event.
Strictly speaking, a bon-bon is Continue reading
Expedition leader Chris Mericle reports he’s gotten the Suwannee River State Park vehicle entrance fees waived for this weekend’s outing, plus a permit
…to view a unique closed area of the park called “5 Holes”. 5 Holes is a series of karst windows leading to a spring. When the water level is right you can walk through a semi-cavern from the river up the spring run to the spring.
So meet us 8AM tomorrow morning, Saturday, August 15h, 2015 at Gibson Park!
James Garrett posted some Continue reading
Sunday the Membership Committee sent this message to WWALS members:
Hello WWALS Members,
It’s been a busy month here in South Georgia and North Florida. This newsletter has updates on our Waterkeeper® Affiliate area, educational events, outings and water trails. Looking forward to Continue reading
Update 2015-08-14: Now plus Five Holes caves at Suwannee River State Park!
This flag marks where Sabal Trail plans to drill under the Suwannee River,
pictured today by Chris Mericle, who also pictured
a number spraypainted on a tree and remarked:
I know it is a small thing but, it is this lack of respect for nature that we will be forced to endure if this pipeline is permitted.
With FL DEP proposing to issue a permit for Sabal Trail, let’s go investigate, and have some fun at the same time.
First we’ll look at the
Alapaha Rise, which is where some of the water that disappears from the Alapaha River at its
sinks comes back up out of the Floridan Aquifer.
To get to the Rise we paddle upstream on the Suwannee River,
then Continue reading
Update 2022-07-20: Better picture labels and access.
Update 2015-10-29: Pictures: Sullivan Launch to Madison Blue Spring Withlacoochee River 2015-10-24.
Downstream on our tea-colored Withlacoochee River to the Blue Spring, it’s the October WWALS Outing!
When: 9AM Saturday October 24th 2015
Where: Sullivan Launch to Madison Blue Springs State Park.
Distance: 10.2 miles, about 5 hours, after a shuttle of about 40 minutes.
Facebook: event.
This outing is Free! But we encourage you to join WWALS today to support our fun outings and important work: /donations/. See our newsletters, and the press Releases and news. And consider joining the new Withlacoochee and Little River Water Trail Committee.
Directions: Continue reading
It’s the annual WWALS Adopt-A-Stream cleanup, this time at GA 135
on the
Atkinson County side of the Alapaha River, plus if there’s time, the
Berrien County side.
When: 9AM Saturday September 26th 2015
Where: Continue reading
It was hot Saturday morning. The water level was perfect (2.2 feet on the Statenville gage),
a nice current to help push us to our destination 14 miles away. As the Alapaha River meanders through the wilderness of South Georgia it erodes the banks on the outside of the curves forming tall bluffs and on the inside of the curve the slow water drops sand to form beautiful white sand beaches that beckoned us to stop for a swim, so we did.
The canopy at times covered the river completely. It is very Continue reading
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Board and Committee members sought by WWALS Watershed Coalition, a WATERKEEPER® Affiliate
Hahira, June 20th, 2015 — From paddle races to opposing
pipelines to building water trails for recreation,
landowner protection, and economy, local nonprofit WWALS Watershed Coalition
seeks additional members, committee members, and board members to
extend advocacy for the watersheds of the Withlacoochee,
Willacoochee, Alapaha, and Little Rivers. Applications are now being
accepted online for committee and board members to be elected at the
July 8th Annual Meeting in Adel, Georgia, and anyone can pay for a
membership at any time.
WWALS Secretary Garry Gentry of Tifton said:
“I have been involved with WWALS since almost the beginning and common sense says we need clean water and good stewardship of our planet to leave as a legacy for the next generation.”
Last month thirty people paddled and won prizes Continue reading
Pope Francis makes a religious, ethical, humane, scientific, and practical case for stewardship of this earth and its waters, with moral and ethical bases for “the choices which determine our behaviour”. His case does not require any reader to be Catholic or Christian, as the Pope integrates his faith with the science of an integral ecology. You don’t have to agree with everything he wrote (I don’t) to agree with the gist of it, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.:
“all life is interrelated”
Pope Francis’ letter to the world is long but well worth reading in full, and these excerpts I hope will encourage everyone to do that.
ENCYCLICAL LETTER LAUDATO SI’ OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS ON CARE FOR OUR COMMON HOME, 18 June 2015, Vatican City. Continue reading
