Intracoastal Waterway - Fort Lauderdale & Boca Raton, FL

Video compilation of my various times on or around the Intracoastal Waterway in south Florida. The Intracoastal is a channel of water that runs parallel to the ocean, separated by the A1A. In order to get to the ocean you have to pass over the Intracoastal via various drawbridges that open at designated times. So in the same way that encountering TriRails, Amtraks and freight trains is a regular part of life in this region, so is the Intracoastal and the bridges. :)

A large portion of the video was taken while riding the Fort Lauderdale water taxi on a couple of occasions, which begins in downtown on the New River, before eventually connecting up to the Intracoastal. There are three main types of water taxi boats used - the smallest, which holds about 15 people, the mid size which holds about 40, and the big double decker complete with a bar and restrooms. You'll see all three types featured in this compilation. Vids were shot from aboard all three as well. The benefit of a daily ticket is that you can ride the water taxi for the entire day, getting on and off at any stop, and transferring around as much as you want. When you get on and off you never know which water taxi is going to be the next one to come by to your stop. Ride it around enough and you'll eventually get to try out all three boat types.

When riding the water taxi the snarky/cheeky/semi informative narration comes with the ride, so, there's not anything I can do about that, though a lot of people may find some of it interesting. (It's funny how some of the information they present seems to be flat out wrong. Like, every narrator points out some yacht that was supposedly used in the 1987 Kurt Russell/Goldie Hawn movie "Overboard." One look at the yacht and I knew......yeah.....that's not the same boat, dude. That was one of my favorite movies as a kid, so I've seen it like 25 times. :D Later on I did a search online to see if I was right and saw that the yacht used in the movie caught fire and burned up long ago. But, that doesn't stop the announcers. ;) )

I also interspersed some of the water taxi vids with corresponding video taken from land at the same spots, to give a little variation in perspective.

One of my favorite places to view the Intracoastal is Gumbo Limbo Environmental Center, here in Boca. The Ashley butterfly trail ends at a small patch of white sandy beach along the Intracoastal where you can sit on some benches and watch the boats go by among the mangroves. (it happened to be high tide when you see the patch of beach at Gumbo Limbo in this vid, so, there wasn't much of a beach happening at that moment.) Another favorite spot is from Hugh Taylor Birch State Park, in Fort Lauderdale. Both are in this vid.

And apologies in advance for any vids that have shakiness - some of my earlier vids had more of that going on before I became more mindful and tried harder to keep things level while videoing. Most of the water taxi vids are actually amazingly level, but.....that's because I tried *insanely* hard. Which is not always easy to do actually when you're in a boat, but, I just kept my camera propped on the boat rails. I even did an entire trip by myself, w/o Tom, just to procure as much steady vid as I could to use in this compilation. Spent the entire time tightly gripping my camera, focusing hard, in the hot and humid sun and breathing boat fumes. Was not a pleasant trip, at all, BUT, I got the footage I needed. :D

Enjoy.....

Видео Intracoastal Waterway - Fort Lauderdale & Boca Raton, FL канала Carissa Conti