7 March ‘09 Saturday
The last 3 or 4 days have kind of blended together. This campground is one of the best we’ve been in for quite awhile. The sites feel large, but if you were to get out and measure, it would probably show that they are the same as any other campground. No matter, we are like a lot of the other campers here and feel that this is a “Four Star” campground that offers a nice lake, swimming pool, and, and, and... We did take the kayak out into the lake the other day. Once we were out there we started to notice these “sticks” sticking out of the water. Fact is, the whole lake seemed to be covered with these “sticks”. As we got closer to them we noticed that these sticks were in fact TREES !!! Yep, this lake is a man-made lake and they just allowed the water to rise without taking the trees out. Apparently they did a little trimming, but that only took the branches to a foot or less below the surface. Other than that, just about every other tree in the lake, they left a “stick” about a foot above the surface. We were “goosed” a few times running over the un-see’n, but over all we enjoyed a lazy paddle around the lake on a sunny afternoon.
We also drove up to Blackwater River State Park as we heard that this was one of the best rivers around the area to kayak. The park is quite large and offers paddles from as much as 4 days to as little as you might want for the day. There is a canoe and kayaking company that has tours that they run on the Blackwater and we were going to stop in and see if there was something we might be interested in. Unfortunately, when we got there, they had already left with their tour group for the day (at 9 am) and for some reason they were only offering a 1 ½ mile float. So finding a place we could put in we hit the water. Because we didn’t have a vehicle to drop us off further up stream, we decided we would paddle up current as far as our energy would allow. We paddled up-stream for a little over an hour before we found a sandbar to pull up on. After a little “R&R”
The last 3 or 4 days have kind of blended together. This campground is one of the best we’ve been in for quite awhile. The sites feel large, but if you were to get out and measure, it would probably show that they are the same as any other campground. No matter, we are like a lot of the other campers here and feel that this is a “Four Star” campground that offers a nice lake, swimming pool, and, and, and... We did take the kayak out into the lake the other day. Once we were out there we started to notice these “sticks” sticking out of the water. Fact is, the whole lake seemed to be covered with these “sticks”. As we got closer to them we noticed that these sticks were in fact TREES !!! Yep, this lake is a man-made lake and they just allowed the water to rise without taking the trees out. Apparently they did a little trimming, but that only took the branches to a foot or less below the surface. Other than that, just about every other tree in the lake, they left a “stick” about a foot above the surface. We were “goosed” a few times running over the un-see’n, but over all we enjoyed a lazy paddle around the lake on a sunny afternoon.
We also drove up to Blackwater River State Park as we heard that this was one of the best rivers around the area to kayak. The park is quite large and offers paddles from as much as 4 days to as little as you might want for the day. There is a canoe and kayaking company that has tours that they run on the Blackwater and we were going to stop in and see if there was something we might be interested in. Unfortunately, when we got there, they had already left with their tour group for the day (at 9 am) and for some reason they were only offering a 1 ½ mile float. So finding a place we could put in we hit the water. Because we didn’t have a vehicle to drop us off further up stream, we decided we would paddle up current as far as our energy would allow. We paddled up-stream for a little over an hour before we found a sandbar to pull up on. After a little “R&R”
we pushed off and enjoyed a lazy float back to the car. On the way up river, we met 2 canoes that were part of the float that we had stopped by to get information on. One of the canoes was occupied by Michelle and Ann from New York, and they were having a ball floating the river.
They had just gotten back into the states from Mexico. They had spent a couple of months down there climbing…floating seems pretty tame compared to climbing. The Blackwater River has a fine white sand bottom that shows a darkish color of “tannin-stain” to the water. It is quite a contrast with the pristine white of the sandbars deposited on the shores of the meandering river. The Blackwater is one of the few remaining sand-bottom rivers in the South-eastern part of the states.