St. Johns River Shipwreck #1

I came across this sunken boat that had washed up against the seawall in Lake Monroe along the Sanford Riverwalk. I've always found shipwrecks, even with relatively small boats like this, to be both intriguing and creepy at the same time. What's the story behind what caused the boat to go down? Who did it belong to? What happened to the rest of the boat? And then there's the creepiness of having a large, mostly submerged object, just sitting there in the dark water, creaking with the currents.


A few months ago, I noticed a few sailboats that had sank a few hundred feet off shore. They were gone when I came across this boat. Perhaps this is part of one?

Lake Monroe Sunset

I was in Sanford, FL a few nights ago and witnessed this great orange sky over Lake Monroe as the sun was setting...

Flooding In Downtown Sanford

After Tropical Storm Fay dumped huge amounts of rain over Florida, there was lots of flooding. Little lakes in city parks overflowed to very high levels, so you can imagine how high a large body of water overflowed. For example, along the St. Johns River. The flooding was seems to be the worst where the river opens up into Lake Monroe. These pictures were taken on September 1, 2008 in Downtown Sanford along the shore of the lake:









Wood Storks were exploring their new watery shoreline.


The road leading into the Sanford Marina was completely underwater. That didn't seem to stop people from driving to the restaurants at the end of the road or riding bicycles to their favorite fishing spots.









There was a news truck there covering the flooding.

At the time that these pictures were taken, the St. Johns River still hadn't crested. It would still be another week before the river reached it's highest point and the water would start to recede.

Sanford Marina...

Sanford, FL is located along the St. Johns River in Seminole County. The city used to have a large steamboat industry due to it's location along Lake Monroe. Lake Monroe is the last area that large boats can travel in before the river gets too shallow. The steamboats are all gone, but the city does have a nice marina near where the steamboats used to dock...