Have you ever had a picture in your head of what you’d like your life to be like? Katie and I have too. We’ve always envisioned being surrounded by nature and truly immersing ourselves in it.

When we first met we shared a love for nature and found ourselves hiking or kayaking every chance we had. Then life and work got in the way the last five years, and we lost touch with that side of ourselves. As a matter of fact, choosing the RV Life was a big part of us planning to get back to nature and live a more fulfilled life.

Of course buying a RV isn’t necessary if you’d like to get back out in nature. We’ve realized since we’ve been in our RV just how many State Parks and nature reserves there are out there. I bet if you look within your area you will find many different places close to you that can help you escape to nature’s beauty.

We’ve been in the RV now for a little over six months and have done plenty of outdoor activities, but for the most part we’ve been staying close to family and focusing on work. Now that we’re about to head West, we’re excited to spend more time exploring the great outdoors, and sharing those experiences with you.

We’ve decided to let the road guide us for the most part, I guess you can say we’ve decided to live on Nomadic Standard Time.

Anyway, our first chronicled adventure was Kayaking down Santa Fe River in Northern Florida.

Kayaking Down Santa Fe River In Northern Florida

If you want to know what a perfect day is you’d have to have been out on the Santa Fe River with us. The weather was a perfect 74 degrees with a slight wind blowing. The water was chilly but the day was perfect.

We’d purchased a half-day canoe package from Rum 138 (from Groupon) and once arrived we had a great conversation with the staff. They informed us of the little offshoots along the river that lead to different springs.

They also let us know that it gets pretty shallow and that we may have an easier time accessing the springs if we were in a tandem kayak vs. a canoe. We wound up upgrading our Groupon deal and for a total of roughly $30 we had a tandem kayak for a half-day adventure. Not too bad.

Check out the video:

In the video below you can see various clips from our kayaking trip down the Santa Fe River in Northern Florida, where we saw all sorts of wildlife and springs. This was right before we bought our GoPro, so we used our phones to document as much as we could… until they both died.

We forgot to bring our portable charger with us and were so excited to capture photos and videos of our trip that we forgot we needed to keep our phones alive so we could call Rum 138 to pick us up. Luckily another group was just finishing up and called in for all of us.

Kayaking Down Santa Fe River In Pictures

I’m going to let the video above do most the talking but below I’ll highlight a few pictures we took along the way.

We launched our Kayak right near Rum Island.

You can see Rum Island right behind me in the picture above.

Then we got to paddling.

Along the journey, we saw tons of wildlife. But the turtles were everywhere.

While the water on the main river wasn’t extremely clear, the water closer to the springs was beautiful. It was much clearer, and the water turned various shades of teal and turquoise. That paired with the water cypress and tupelo trees made for a pretty surreal landscape.

A couple more for good measure.

Overall it was a beautiful day with gorgeous waters and wildlife. We’d most certainly recommend this trip to anyone that is near or around Rum Island or the Santa Fe River in Northern Florida. We would recommend going on a weekday if possible, as the staff informed us it can get pretty crowded on the weekend, making it difficult to visit the various springs throughout the river.

What are some of your favorite spots to go Kayaking? We’d love to hear about them so we may be able to stop by and check some of them out.