(quiet guitar music) - [Narrator] Everyone focuses on protecting far away places like the Amazon rainforest, but if you look closely in your own backyard, you'll find rivers, springs and other wild places that need to be protected too.

- Hi, my name is Ava.

- Hi, I'm Marin.

- I'm Mallori and I've live in Florida my whole life and I haven't been to a lot of the places we've gone this week.

- [Ava] People think of Florida as the hot state with theme parks, alligators, vacation homes on the beach and hurricanes.

It sometimes feels like the wild parts of Florida, like the Springs, are a secret.

Over the next three days, we're going to paddle 50 miles from the Rainbow River Head Springs to the Gulf of Mexico.

This is an important part of the Florida wildlife corridor.

- [Tourist] Florida Wildlife Corridor is living, breathing, green system that is hidden on our own backyards.

The biggest threat to it's existence is not recognizing that it's there.

Because we'll keep building our roads and keep building our developments in a way that will cut the corridor to smaller and smaller pieces.

It's been too long that what people's mind of an explorer is someone who looks like me, but the truth is, we're all explorers, and to have three young girls carry that image that's gonna be really empowering and help inspire the next generation of explorers and conservationists.

♪ Take me back to where sun shines ♪ - Our guide this week is Lars Anderson.

- I have been paddling the Rivers of Florida since I was a teen, but as a professional guy, I've been doing it for 24 years.

I'm guessing that with the Withlacoochee Rainbow system several hundred times and it never gets old.

For me the passion that's really driving this, is teaching people about their own waterways and their own land.

- [Mallori] I feel super excited for these next three days.

Super, super excited for the rest of the week.

I feel like I need a new word for excited.

- [Ava] First day on the water guys, adventure day one expedition.

Today, we started in the Rainbow River and then we paddle boarded all the way down to the Withlacoochee.

- [Mallori] In the Rainbow River, you could see just straight down and you could see like the turtles and all the fish just swim right under you.

- [Ava] Oh, look how blue it is.

It's so pretty.

- [Marin] Where's the turtle?

- [Ava] Oh, the water looks gorgeous.

- [Lars] Florida springs are so unique and we have 1,021 springs in Florida Rainbow Spring is one of the larger ones.

The Florida aquifer is unique among some because it is replenished with the rainfall.

So it's just this beautiful, renewable, recharging resource but even so you know, we are just not really respecting it to any extent.

- [Marin] Oh look, there are two wood ducks.

- [Mallori] Yes.

- [Ava] Yes.

- [Les] A wood duck with her baby.

- [Marin] Yes.

- [Eva] They are all bumping into each other, it's so cute.

(gentle music) - Oh, Marin.

- [Marin] Look at that rainbow.

It's so bright.

- Oh my gosh, Rainbow Rainbow River.

- It's so pretty.

- [Eva] Can you tell us about the grass that's here?

- [Lars] This is some of the most diverse freshwater habitats in the world.

Most of what we're passing right now is called sagittaria.

They all evolved out on land, so they still have flowers, and if you pick one up, pick one of those flowers up and smell it, it smells really sweet, really good.

Once they hit the surface, they have to really attract the pollinator quickly.

- [Mallori] Where the Rainbow River and the Withlacoochee River met, it was really cool to see, because you look down and it's clear, and then in that second, you can't see through and you could see like this kind of boundary, right where the connection is made.

- [Eva] Today I felt really like a little mini adventurer just being able to be out there when nobody else was out there, it just kind of made it seem like, more wild and like untouched.

- And if they want, I feel really happy and excited.

So I'm definitely really curious and really excited for the next few days.

- [Mallori] We're spending most of our time paddling but it's important to protect the land around this water.

On the Rainbow River, we paddled right by a gap in the corridor that we need to save.

We're trying to connect and protect the corridor here in Dunnellon.

The corridor is not something we need to build.

It's already there.

We just have to protect it.

(gentle music) - Hi guys.

- Hi.

- How are you?

- Good, how are you doing?

I'm Mallori.

- [Mallori] This morning we went to see camera traps, which was super cool.

- [William] This is what wild Florida actually looks like.

It's always beautiful to be out here, right?

I mean, even when it's a hundred degrees and mosquitoes are biting you and like, it's like, "Ah!"

But it's still a beautiful thing to be out there.

- Well, this is cool.

Come here, look at this.

What is that?

- Turtle hole?

Ugh.

- It's the gopher tortoise hole.

So how do we figure out where to put the camera?

Like, why don't we put it by camera here, or why not over there, or there?

- [Ava] Do you observe where animals like to go, like tracks or spy or like?

- [William] Yes.

- So, who wants to open the first camera, and then pull the camera out and we could check it here but let's go and check it over by the Jeep.

You can open it up.

- [Mallori] Oh.

- [William] Or Face recognition, but I'm sweating so much, it might not recognize me.

- It says gopher tortoise.

- That's a gopher tortoise, right?

So you saw the home and there's the video proof of - [Marin] That's so cool.

- [William] The gopher tortoise.

That's you guys.

(Marin, Eva and Mallori laughing) - When you actually have the pictures and you are able to tell the story makes a huge difference, right?

It's like if you make an impact, so there's a huge population for that.

It has no idea this is happening.

Now, let me show you the story, right?

And so this is where the cameras really tell everything.

So, that's the mama panther, right?

And we got her to photograph her and we got to photograph her kid.

- [Children] Oh my god.

(gentle music) - [Mallori] William taught us so much about the Florida Panthers and how putting these cameras out can really affect like how the lawmaking process works and how they can persuade the lawmakers to put a certain wildlife crossing in a certain place.

- [Marin] After checking the camera traps with William, we got back onto the Withlacoochee.

- [Ava] When we are on the Withlacoochee River, it was very windy, there was a lot of turns.

It was kind of like a maze.

- [Marin] The Withlacoochee water was more tannic.

From the surface, it looks like an orangy brown color, but when you touch it, it's still transparent.

- Oh, it's like Rocky down here.

- [Lars] The limestone is, especially down along the Barge Canal, is some of the oldest exposed rock in Florida.

All right, so we're coming up on the canal now.

For centuries, everybody thought there was a natural crossing of Florida and eventually figured out there wasn't a natural one, so then they started devising ideas and making a canal across the state.

- [Marin] Even though, the Barge Canal seemed wild in the moment, it was actually manmade.

It was made so that there would be a waterway for boats to cross Florida.

It was never finished though, and left an almost too perfect scar across a third of Florida.

- There was lots of wind.

So that was a little more difficult, my arms were a little sore, trying to keep up and I did fall in one time, but it's okay.

The only thing that had to be sacrificed was my beef jerky.

- [Ava] After paddling the Barge Canal, we had to pull our boats out of the water and drive around the huge berm that blocked our path to the rest of the Withlacoochee.

Once we launched again, we paddled down the river to Yankee town.

(gentle music) ♪ Take me there ♪ ♪ Take me there ♪ - [Eva] I've been feeling really good about the expedition.

I've been getting closer to the people.

It's to feel more like a home, like a family to me, honestly.

And it's really beautiful to see how nature can bring everyone together.

- What I'm really looking forward to still is, just being able to meet the Original Trekkers that did expeditions before: Mallori, Joe, and Carlton.

I just think it'll be really cool since we're kind of the next generation of them.

I'm really excited to meet them and be able to learn from them.

- [Marin] Say it's Friday, - [Ava] It's Friday.

- [Mallori] Oh, today is Friday?

(Mallori, Eva and Marin laughing) - [Mallori] I am losing track of the days.

- The sky does look really pretty this morning though.

(Mallori, Eva and Marin laughing) - Good morning.

- Morning.

- Hi, I'm Carlton, Mallori.

- Hey, I'm Mallori.

- Mallori, nice to meet you.

(upbeat music) - Let's go, let's go climb the tower.

- Oh, that's beautiful.

- [Carlton] Holy moly!

- Breeze.

- Does anybody wanna look through binoculars at anything?

- See the Roseate Spoonbill guys.

- Yeah.

- What are they?

- Oh wow!

- Roseate spoonbills - Their track flew, that way.

- There's still a- - Great egret.

- Great egret over there.

- [Carlton] When we went on that first expedition in 2012, we were hoping to try to give a lift to this idea of a connected corridor in Florida and to be here, 10 years later and to see this idea still being alive and still growing and to see the next generation starting to carry this forward, it gives me huge hope that we're actually gonna save this place.

- [Mallori] So cool to be at the edge of the Gulf where you've come down the river, and now you're just thinking about that transition all the way out to the Gulf.

- [Marin] Right there.

- [Ava] Oh, did you see that lighting?

- [Mallori] Yeah.

- [Marin] Yeah.

- [Carlton] Yeah, it's weird.

It's moving, like that storm's moving.

- [Ava] Ugh!

- Wow, pretty bad in here.

You gotta fly on your left cheek.

- Yeah.

- And on your hat.

- And on your left arm Still on your hat.

- Yeah, they've really honed in on us now.

- [Mallori] After escaping the bugs at the end of our sunrise hike with the Original Trekkers, we headed back to the Withlacoochee River to finish our journey to the Gulf.

- One of the things I love about Florida is the freshwater and saltwater connection.

Big part of our expeditions has been paddling different rivers across the state.

The rivers, really represent life.

It's a chance to kind of see that connection from the aquifer, to the surface water and flow with it and then see where its ultimate destination is.

- I'm really wanting to learn from these girls.

I wanna see this landscape through their eyes so that I can be inspired and understand how the up and coming generation is seeing these places.

This is their backyard.

They're from here, and it's gonna be really cool just to paddle beside them and to share stories and to learn about what they've experienced in the past two or three nights out here.

(gentle music) - Here comes the rain again.

- [Mallori] Paddling with the Original Trekkers was really fun.

I feel like we all had this really good connection we could relate.

And so when we got to be with them it's like, we're together in this.

- [Les] Yeah, there's spoonbills and wood Storks in this cypress tree.

Carlton, do you see 'em?

- [Mallori] One, two, three four- - [Les] Right behind you.

- [Mallori] Yeah, they're bunch.

- [Les] Look on the left side, Mallori.

They're everywhere.

- [Mallori] That's Amazing.

- [Les] Did you see that one?

Did you see that one go right over.

- Now we got 'em on both sides of it like thread in the needle between two mac daddy storms.

(Mallori singing) (indistinct) - We're going on, to the Gulf.

- To the Gulf.

- Snacks, snacks, snacks.

- You guys have to keep up to flip me.

- catch me if you can.

- Oh then, when do we have?

- We're so close.

We literally can taste the water.

It's really salty.

- [Mallori] When I stepped out of my kayak on the beach at the end of the trip, I felt like overwhelmed, 'cause I felt proud of myself and I felt happy that we all made it through all the challenges and like, the highs and the lows of the expedition.

We all were able to come together and like, reach the end.

- [Travelor 1] The thought was that the three Original Trekkers would be in some way trying to inspire the next generation, but of course it really worked in reverse.

- Marin and Ava have been awesome.

It's only been like four days, but I like love them so much and I hope we can all be together again.

- One of the hardest things I've noticed about kind of adulthood is, it's easy to give up hope, and that's the thing that we can least afford to lose, is our hope.

- [Lars] They're gonna carry these stories the rest of their life, and I'm gonna carry my memories of being out there with the rest of my life too, it's just, it goes both ways.

- [Mallori] It's important that we keep as much of Florida wild and protected as possible.

So that future generations are able to see and experience the Florida that I do and that I get to enjoy every day - [Les] To be able to travel from the Rainbow River all the way down to the Gulf Coast and see this connected, vibrant wildlife corridor in their own backyards, they're gonna be the champions for its future.

Maybe more than in a long time I feel like this Florida wildlife corridor, can be saved.

- I wanna be a role model to a few other kids and inspire people to actually get out of their houses, go explore and try to protect all of our nature that we have left.

- [Les] Once you've immersed yourself into these places and taken that journey that connects from one place to the next, to the next and you see it there, you're gonna share that story for the rest of your life.

♪ Take me back home ♪ ♪ Paradise, paradise ♪ ♪ Paradise, take me back, ♪ ♪ Take me back to paradise" ♪ (lighthearted guitar music)