Saturday, October 7, 2017 - Newbegun Creek - Elizabeth City, NC
It's fall, but the weather forecast was for upper 80s, so I drove down past Elizabeth City, North Carolina and paddled down (or up) Newbegun Creek which is a tributary of the Pasquotank River.
There is a nice boat ramp at a little spot called Sawmill Park. It's not really a park, but there is space for about a dozen vehicles with trailers and another 5 or 6 non-trailer spaces. The water level was fairly high, so launching my kayak was easy. There was a Wildlife Officer parked in the parking lot when I got there, but he didn't bother me.
The water temperature is definitely getting cooler, but it wasn't at all "cold". And the air temperature was definitely warm especially for October. Not complaining about that, though.
As I paddled down the creek, there were times when the wind picked up and was pretty strong, but other times, it was completely calm. Calm conditions are always preferred (by me anyway).
I went down a little creek and found a sailboat that appeared to have been abandoned. Such a strange phenomenon ... abandoning boats. There's a place on the North Landing River where a bunch of boats have been abandoned all in the same place.
I also found a handmade sign indicating that an adjacent creek was "private" and that there was a $250 fine for trespassing. I didn't go past it, but I'm not exactly sure of the legality of that.
There was Spanish Moss hanging on almost every tree. Certainly on every Bald Cypress tree. You don't see that further north.
I saw the beginnings of some of the trees starting to get fall color. I also saw a few water lilies growing naturally in the creek. No flowers at this point of the season but cool floating leaves.
Part of the creek has houses along it and I saw a few docks. Some were in good repair and others not so much.
I didn't see any blimps (aerostats) out of the hangar at the end of the creek. Those things are cool, though.
There were a few powerboats out, buy not many. They all slowed down as they passed me, which is always nice.
Great day today. It was partly cloudy most of the trip and got mostly cloudy toward the end. And it didn't start raining until I got everything loaded back on the truck.
2 hours and 42 minutes on the water and 5.0 miles on the GPS. Scroll below the pictures to see the track map.
EDIT: Here's the GoPro video.
