Wednesday, July 5, 2017 - Old Pungo Ferry Road
Well, the weather forecasts all week have been 1) crappy and 2) WRONG for the most part. They have been predicting thunderstorms everyday and for the most part we haven't seen any (or at least not many). It has been mostly HOT and muggy. They have been right about that forecast. This morning the forecasts were saying thunderstorms ALL DAY. And of course, it was mostly sunny with no storms.
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We've been trying to go out and paddle at sunset, but the weather has not been cooperating. We decided to give it a go this afternoon and get in a quick paddle. We arrived at the launch at Old Pungo Ferry Road and no one else was there. It looked calm and although it was really cloudy (the clouds had increased a bunch since the time we left the house), but it didn't look like thunderstorms were imminent. The water level was fairly low. You can see on the water level graph that it has been dropping over the past several days.
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It was incredibly calm even when it started raining a bit. The water was almost completely still. We only saw one boat the whole time we were out. There were a pair of osprey guarding their nest on the channel marker. I'm guessing they had eggs in the nest because they didn't move off the nest when I paddled close to the marker.
Then we went down this long inlet and saw these HUGE barges at the silos at a farm on Princess Anne Road. We might have heard some banjos playing down at the end of the inlet some the dudes hanging out down there. Just sayin ....
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We pulled up one of the floats along the river to see what was down there and sure enough, there were blue crabs in the pot. I didn't think this water was salty enough for them but it surely must be. There are a lot of the floats along the river.
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So, of course it stayed cloudy the whole time and we didn't get to see the sunset, but it was great to get out on the water. It was calm and peaceful, not hot, no wind, no boats, and just a little bit of rain. And the sun will set again tomorrow.
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Great paddle. 1 hour and 25 minutes on the water and 2.3 miles on the GPS. Scroll below the pictures to see the track maps and water level graph.
