Mist on the water behind us
Another tough put-in
It was a beautiful morning when Sam and I unloaded our kayaks and got on the water at 8:35. We paddled directly out to what looked like the biggest island and started following its shoreline. In and out of its various inlets. At one point, we observed a swarm of thousands of whirligig beetles boiling on the surface of the water.
A lot of whirligig beetles
I split the swarm, and they continued their frenetic activity on both sides of me.
The next point of interest on our survey was the elephant that came to the shore for a drink:
We continued hugging the shore until it became evident that we miscalculated the position of the first island, and on our current course moving down the peninsula we were not going to find the channel we were seeking. We did an about face and paddled past all or our prior sightseeing spots and found that channel the indicated we had reached the first of the islands in the chain.
Our first island
We wove between a few islands and followed a Great Blue Heron. While taking photos of the heron, we spotted a bald eagle flying behind the island we had just come around, so we went back to look for it. We didn’t see it again and continued on our examination of all of the former hilltops in the area.
We found and circumnavigated a few islands that were newly exposed – the lake level has dropped several feet in the past few months, and some of these hilltops that are usually submerged are now unmapped islands.
This was perhaps the most substantial of the islands we saw today:
We paddled across a large expanse of water to a big island on our way back to port. It looks like the Army Corps of Engineers has assigned it the very romantic name of “34”:
This is where I found this interesting construction of nature – looks like egg sacs of some kind, with the exposed ones drying out and dying. Bruce probably knows what it is. I hope it’s not some insanely destructive invasive species, because it looks positioned to be massively successful.
Right after this we saw a grebe diving repeatedly, but never could get a good photo of it. Then we paddled around another unmapped island with an interesting warning buoy that was intended for different conditions.
Pay attention (another “new” unmapped island) – negative shallow?
The Dead Fish Takeout
Conclusions – Lessons Learned:
This was a lovely paddle. The trees were colorful for their dry state, and the dead tree roots took on some fantastic forms (see photo album). Then there were the whirligig beetles, the bald eagle, the bryozoans (I checked with Bruce - not egg cases), and the grebe. It was a great three hours on the water. I would like to do it again in the spring and at different water levels.
Alice would love this trip.
See detailed views of the GPS route in the photo album, showing the unmapped islands we went around.
The author, Kent Walters (photo by Sam Reyna)
Please see photo album here.