Category Archives: Outing

Outings, Upper Suwannee, Water Trails, Water Council, and against Fracking and Sabal Trail pipeline –August 2015 WWALS Newsletter

Sunday the Membership Committee sent this message to WWALS members:

300x225 The Rocks, Alapaha River, 2015-07-11, in August 2015 WWALS Newsletter, by WWALS Membership Committee, for WWALS.net, 0 August 2015 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: Sabal Trail Pipeline, Alapaha, Suwannee, and Withlacoochee Rivers, WWALS Outing 2015-08-15

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

Sullivan Launch to Blue Spring, Withlacoochee River Outing 2015-10-24

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

GA 135 Alapaha River Cleanup 2015-09-26

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

Lakeland To Hotchkiss Rd. Landing Paddle

It was hot Saturday morning. The water level was perfect (2.2 feet on the Statenville gage),  IMG_0892 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

Board and Committee members sought by WWALS Watershed Coalition, a WATERKEEPER® Affiliate

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

This sister earth now cries out to us –Pope Francis

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”

Tiber River, vatican.va

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

Statenville to Sasser Landing with Turket Creek Waterfall -jsq @ WWALS 2015-02-15

It was a nice day with current on the Alapaha River from 300x180 Selfie Turket, in Statenville to Sasser Landing on the Alapaha River, by John S. Quarterman, for WWALS.net, 15 February 2015 Statenville to Sasser Landing 15 February 2015, with a side trip up the Alapahoochee River to the famous Turket Creek Waterfall. This morning WWALS continues from Sasser Landing to Jennings Bluff, plus a walk up the Dead River to the sink where the Alapaha River goes underground. Continue reading

WWALS Goals for 2015

Boating on our rivers and water trails for them, issues and education: you can help with the fun and work of WWALS! Here’s much of what can be done laid out in a list of a dozen WWALS Goals for 2015. The board has at least one opening right now, and the committees always could use more members. You can apply through the online form.

See also the monthly newsletter, the news about WWALS, and of course the website with blog, facebook the page and group, and WWALS on twitter, Youtube, and the membership google group. You can become a member or corporate sponsor of WWALS online right now.

The WWALS Executive Committee 11 March 2015 recommended Continue reading