I had quite the nice paddle on the Potomac River on Sunday, 8 August. We have had a dry summer and the rivers are down but, after a mass of rainstorms came through last week, the Potomac near Point of Rocks, MD, still had a pretty good current flowing. The water was crystal clear. At one point up about 1/2 mile from my entry point at Nolan’s Ferry Road, I saw a school of about 300 good sized fish, presumably Largemouth Bass.
The paddle up from Nolan’s Ferry Road to the Rt. 15 bridge across the Potomac was right about four miles and quite a good workout. There were some stretches of low water where the going was slowly but there were more stretches of deeper water, up to about four feet, where the going was much easier. I saw a few Great Blue Herons and Osprey but no eagles on this trip.
Trips to “Urgent Care” not withstanding (everyone is okay), we are having a great time at the Outer Banks (Salvo, NC). Thanks especially to Julie for getting the house. We have nice a house with pool and hot tub and are about a five minute walk from the, very uncrowded, beach. Of course we are BBQ’ing like crazy!
Traffic was hell getting down here. It took Kim, Don, and I 5 hours to drive the 125 miles down here. Julie, Ed, and Ryan had about a 9 and 1/2 hour journey from Centreville. Dave came down Sunday. He had the longest drive but made it in less than seven hours. Locals say the traffic was nearly as bad as they could recall it being.
Julie and Ed took a short trek down to the beach Saturday night but the rest of us didn’t make it out until Sunday. Unfortunately it was in the mid-90’s with a wicked wind blowing from the south. The wind was blowing major sand so we didn’t last too long on the beach.
Sunday night we had heavy thunderstorms, the wind switched to the north and abated considerably, and the temps dropped down to the mid-80’s. That made for much more enjoyable trips to the beach! This morning has been much of the same. I headed down to the beach with my coffee, watched the sun rise, and took some pictures.
I had a great paddle on the Potomac River today. I put in at Algonkian Regional Park and just happened to look up and catch this Bald Eagle in the tree. It seemed totally unconcerned that I was hanging out below it taking pictures. Joy!
On the way from Northern Virginia to my sister Kim’s house in Suffolk yesterday, I stopped at the James River near Surrey to throw my kayak in the water for a couple of hours. Oh it was sweet…it had been a couple of weeks since I’d been on the water and I expect that yesterday’s and tomorrow’s paddles will be the last of the season. It is getting a bit chilly and I really need to get the rack off the roof of my car so that I can give the car a serious washing!
Yesterday was very windy and cool, about 50 degrees or so. While had mostly sunny skies on the drive down, once I got in the water and looked around, I saw pockets of dark clouds and rain all around me. Fortunately I only got rained on for about ten minutes. I stayed mostly dry since I had a rain jacket on and was using my splash skirt, due to the choppy water.
I put it at the Carlisle Tract, part of the Hog Island WMA, boat landing on Lawnes Creek and paddled out onto the James River. Upriver a bit is the Surrey Power station which I had not desire to get too close to since who knows what it was putting in the water and what kind of security they had in place. I did head up that way just to see what I could of the shoreline. Then I headed back downriver to do the same. Downriver is a boat graveyard across from Fort Eustice. I had no desire to get too close to that for the same reasons I avoided the power plant.
Having perused a bit of the James, I headed back to Lawnes Creek where I went upstream and took all the offshoots I could find that wound their way through the three to eight foot high reeds. It was nice to get out of the wind and waves. As I prepared to wind up up my paddle, I became increasingly concerned about developing storms. It still looked nice to the southwest but it was very dark and obviously pouring in the northeast on the other side of the James in Newport News.
I paddled furiously back to the boat launch area and got my boat up on the rack. It started to sprinkle as I was changing into warm, dry clothes but I managed to finish up and get into my car just before it started pouring. Timing is everything!
I didn’t see much in the way of wildlife but did see the usual Great Blue herons, Double-breasted cormorants, an Osprey, and, for the first time in the wild this year for me, a pair of Bald eagles. One was flying overhead of me for a while and the light was just right so the contrast of white head and tail against the dark body was very vivid. That sighting made the paddle particularly rewarding!
In early August I went up to Vermont to attend the Vergennes Union High School 30-year class reunion. I actually left there after my 10th grade year but have had the privilege of attending the 20 and 30-year reunions as a guest. Other than the reunion, the trip was for kayaking, birding, picture taking, hiking, camping and visiting with friends. It was well worth it!
You can read more about the trip by clicking here or browsing under my “Currant News” section. You can view photos by clicking here or following the “My Photo Album” link on my home page.
The links in the PDF format “trip read” don’t open in new windows as I had hoped they would. If you follow a link in the PDF document, it will take you forever to reload the PDF file. Ergo…
All the imbedded links are replicated below. Please use them rather than the links in the PDF document if you wish to find out more. I will have to come up with another presentation format but bear with me in the meantime.
I met my friend Garrett “Buz” Shea at River Bend Park on the Potomac River in Great Falls, MD, to paddle on Sunday. I have been to the park a few times with my uncle to hike and bird watch but never to paddle and rarely in the summer. The park seemed so totally foreign to me since I’d been there mostly in the winter time.
We had a great paddle. The day was mostly clear and not too hot but fairly humid. Buz likes paddling up through the rapids so he can float back down through them so that is what we did. We paddled up the north side of the river and on the way back down tried to cut across to the south side at a cut through an island.
We almost made it but the current was such that after I watched Buz try to get up through this cut a couple of times, I found a way to get through that, albeit twisty and turny, was relatively calm. Unfortunately, that left us down river from another set of rapids that Buz wanted to run.
We broke down, got out of our kayaks and toted them over a set of rocks so we could be upstream where we wanted to be. Buz noted that that was the exact spot where he broke his toe on the rocks last year. He now doesn’t wear an open toe shoe while paddling…
Once back on the water, we paddled further upstream to about the point where Seneca Creek comes into the Potomac from the north and there is a forbidding set of rapids that we would have had to portage to get past. We decided to turn around and float back down river to our entry point. That was perfect for me. I wasn’t tired but I was ready to head back.
Buz said he got quite the good work out. He hadn’t paddled since we shot down the Shenandoah near Front Royal twice in two days over Memorial Day weekend while camping out at a friend’s place on the river. I can’t believe that it is that time already but we’ll be up there next weekend for the Labor Day festivities.
I drove up to Brunswick, MD, to paddle on 16 August. It is about a 45 mile drive and longer than I would normally drive for an afternoon paddle but I hadn’t paddled up there so I figured WTF, eh? The river, though low, seemed to be running fairly well by my estimation. It took me a good hour plus to get upstream a couple of miles.
I got up to a point where I could see Weverton Cliffs which is a vantage point on the Appalachian trail that I have hiked to from both the north and south. The view from there to Harper’s Ferry and the junction of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers is awesome!
All summer I have been hearing from friends in Vermont about how miserably rainy the whole summer has been. Fortunately, yesterday, for the Vergennes Union High School Class of ’79 reunion the weather was perfect. It was sunny and in the low to mid-80’s. The folks who coordinated the reunion did a great job and there was a pretty good turnout. It was nice to have a chance to talk to old friends!
Anyhow, I started my trip up here on Thursday, which was a beautiful day. I kayaked on the Susquehanna River a bit north of Harrisburg, PA, en route Watkins Glen from home. I camped in the state park there for the night and the rains started at about midnight. I broke camp in the morning in the rain and it rained on and off most of the day. Yesterday was beautiful but today the rains came back with a vengeance.
This is putting a damper (no pun intended) on my kayaking and camping plans, to say the least….
I will be, depending on the results of a job interview I had yesterday, heading out of the DC area north toward Vermont on Thursday, 30 July. I would like to stop in the Scranton area to kayak on the Susquehanna River and visit an old Navy buddy in Avoca or camp in the area. Should those plans come to fruition, I hope to be up at Linda Devino’s the next day around noon.
Saturday I will go to the reunion at D.A.R. State Park, which is about a 5 minute walk from the Devino’s. My good friend, Danny Mack, will be in the area visiting his mother…we hope to hook up sometime other than during the reunion. My good friend, Mike Livingston, who lives in Middlebury is another person with whom I would like to hook up at a time other than the reunion, hopefully at his camp in Ripton. I love that place. I would be happy to hook with anyone else that might be around while I am in the area.
I did all of this last October (see the pictures) less hitting Lake Carmi but I did it off-season. I might have some difficulties during the peak of the summer vacation season getting the awesome campsites I got last year in October. I would also greatly enjoy spending a night at Ed Devino’s deer camp in Pittsfield if I can swing it. Who is to say whether or not I will be able to fit all this in especially since I would like to get a day or two of camping and paddling in New York state either in the Adirondacks or the Finger Lakes on the way back home.
To top it all off, my brother-in-law, Ed Davidson, who is from Rutland will be there visiting his folks. He of course wants to show me some of his world and introduce me to his folks and I want to show him Vermont from my perspective. So much to do and so little time.
Oh, and we will be drinking some beers and playing some Cornhole!
