We met at the Lake Hamilton Public Boat Ramp at 10:00 AM just south of the city of Hot Springs in Arkansas. This was an “out-and-back”, so no shuttle. As we were prepping our boats, we were commenting about the full parking lot of trucks with trailers. A guy volunteered that this was a fishing derby day, and boats would be coming in fast at 4:00 PM. Lucky for us our schedule had us getting out at 2:00. HCC participants were Duane Heckelsberg and me, and we picked up one additional “interested stray” from people Duane knew – Brock Moss. The safety orientation focused on the only concern for the day – cold water. I stressed my usual point of staying right-side up, and off we went.
We got on the water by about 10:20. Being that we were at an actual boat ramp, this was a super-easy put-in.
The Put-In at Lake Hamilton Public Boat Ramp
We paddled around the boat ramp peninsula and across the channel to Electric Island. We enjoyed the nice scenery and the great weather as we followed the shoreline from west to east. A great blue heron dropped out of a tree as we rounded the east end of the island and paddled across another channel to the unnamed island to the north. It was on this segment that a goose had to gain a few feet of altitude to keep from hitting me.
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Unnamed Island north of Electric Island |
It was actually warmer than we thought it was going to be, so after a couple of miles, we stopped on a convenient gravel beach on the unnamed island to strip off a layer or two, and enjoyed some food, conversation and the view.
After our rest stop, we continued paddling around the island with no name, where we invaded the comfort zone of a lone grebe and crossed the channel again toward Electric Island.
Paddling into the sun, we arrived at the Electric Island’s official marked trailhead. We beached our kayaks and changed shoes.
We walked the well-maintained trail to the other end of the island. On the way, a small herd of white-tailed deer sprinted in the opposite direction down by the north shore. We saw a palliated woodpecker and a blue jay, along with the chimney and some footings of Graham Hall’s house from the 1930’s.
We took the reverse loop trail back to the other end of the island and saw the chimney and footings of the Forsyth family’s getaway.
Then back to the kayaks, where we saw the remains of a motor that ran the pump, sucking water out of the lake to use for running water in the Forsyth house.
Then it was back to the trailhead and our kayaks, with another change of shoes.
We saw a pair of cormorants as we paddled across the channel on our way back to the take-out. We arrived about 1:30, well ahead of the angry herd of fishermen.
Great weather, good company, clean air and entertaining exercise. It doesn’t get much better than that.
