Sunday, August 28, 2016 - Indian Creek Road - Smith Creek - Northwest River
Finally, we had a day without blistering hot weather! The humidity was pretty high early on in the day, though and I was drenched in sweat just from loading the kayak on my car! But once I got on the water, it was much better.
I decided to launch from Indian Creek Road. The put-in is just a small patch of gravel along the road not far from the entrance to Northwest River Park. In theory, the put-in is "maintained" by the City of Chesapeake, but there's not much to the spot. There is just enough parking for about 3 or 4 cars. But it was perfect for my purposes.
Normally, this creek is pretty muddy but today it was pretty clear. Probably because we haven't had a lot of rain lately. The water level was pretty low too. But again, it was fine for me to paddle.
It was pretty cloudy when I started out and started to sprinkle just a little about 20 minutes into the trip, but that's all the rain I would see all day. But it stayed cloudy the whole time which was nice.
I saw a few boats out but not nearly as many as I expected. A few people were out fishing the creek from a small pier on the side of the creek and a few others in boats ranging from kayaks and canoes to bass boats. I didn't see a lot of widlife. A few birds, including to HUGE Great Blue Herons, and lots of dragonflies, but not much else. No turtles, surprisingly.
Since it's getting late in the season, there was a LOT of submerged vegetation in some of the creeks. So much so that some of it was no longer "submerged". Really, really thick. There were several duckblinds along the way in various stages of disrepair.
This was a great paddle. I think that this might be a good place to check out in the fall to see some fall color. Even though there were a lot of bald cypress trees (of course), there appeared to be a good number of hardwood trees, as well.
Great day today. 3 hours and 15 minutes on the water and 6.3 miles on the GPS. Scroll below the pictures to see the track map.
Here's the GoPro video.
