Tag: kayak

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Paddle Bob Travel Bob

Return to Silver Springs

I heard them long before I spotted them.

After scanning the shoreline for a few moments, I saw furtive movements. About 20 rhesus monkeys were along the shoreline. Their shrieking stopped when they saw me, but after they realized I was no threat and no food was forthcoming, the continued playing, squabbling and eating. I let my bow nestle into the vegetation, grew quite and played the voyeur, watching their monkey business and listening to their shenanigans reverberate through the surrounding forest, answered by strange bird languages that struck my ear as something that might come from a mutated cockatoo.

After watching the monkeys for a while, I made my way up to the springhead, giving the gators along the way a wide berth. The springhead is astounding, as much for the Florida tourist kitsch that has erupted around it as for the sweet, transparent water rising up out of limestone fissures. Fortunately, the park is only a small portion of the paddle, and most of it feels more like navigating a Tarzan movie than watching fat Midwesterners gawk at alligators.

This was my second time paddling Silver Springs, and clearly it didn’t disappoint. The weather was perfect — cool and sunny — and I had long stretches of water entirely to myself. The 9.5 mile paddle was sublime, the perfect antidote to the winter gloom I’d fled in Knoxville. Below is a detail of my GPS route at the springhead, and here’s a link to a few more photos from the paddle.

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Paddle Bob

Paddling Callville Bay on Lake Mead

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My first kayak trip on Lake Mead taught me a quick lesson in scale. I thought Lake Loudon was a big lake. Mead dwarfs it.

For some reason, I decided to put in on the north shore of Mead instead of near Boulder City. I was wanting to avoid a trip across Hoover Dam, which can be a pain when there’s traffic, and I also wanted to explore a bit. I settled on Callville Bay, which isn’t too far from here. But I was wondering why I couldn’t find much on kayaking up there.

Now I know.

I put in at the marina there before 7 a.m. on Sunday. It’s a nice facility, but launching the kayak was a little tricky. The area near the boat ramp is rough. In fact, it looks as if the boat ramp itself is pretty rough as the’ve extended it numerous times t chase the drought-depleted waters of Mead. But I set off, out of the bay and after surveying my options I decided to head southwest, mostly to keep the sun at my back and because I could see chunks of shade in the mountains up there.

It wasn’t long before I spotted Sentinel Island. I started paddling toward it. And paddling. And paddling. It was a lot farther off than I’d realized. It started dawning on me how big the lake was when I noticed how tiny boats motoring along the south shore appeared. Just crossing the lake

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Paddle Bob

Paddling Calderwood Lake in a fog …

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I normally paddle solo, but when Jim, who recently was ordained Bishop of Bivalves at the Oyster Sunday celebration, said he was up for a kayaking trip, I jumped at the chance for some company.

We intended to paddle Fontana Lake, but after braving The Dragon for the second time in as many weeks, I was happy to divert to Calderwood, which Jim recommended. It’s a little closer than Fontana, just off 129 on the way to Robbinsville.

In the end, I liked Calderwood better than Fontana. It lacks the scale and long views that Fontana boasts, but the intimacy of Calderwood is very alluring. The banks are almost vertical as it snakes through the mountains, and when we set off at about 11 yesterday morning, a thin layer of fog clung to the water, giving the first part of our paddle a surreal feel.

First impression of Calderwood is that it’s freakin’ cold. Fontana didn’t strike me as being much colder the Loudon (though I’m sure it was), but Calderwood felt icy. Just stepping into it to launch the kayak convinced me I didn’t want to end up in the water. Water temperatures were about 50 degrees, which probably accounts for the veil of fog that didn’t burn off until about noon.

The lake is about 8 miles long, lying between Cheoah and Chilhowee lakes and straddling the North Carolina-Tennessee line. We launched from a small camping area that Alcoa owns and operates near the Cheoah dam, and before the day was over, we logged about 14 miles paddling, much of it exploring small branches and waterfalls.

We were trying to reach the dam at Chilhowee, but we came up short, knowing we were pretty close to our limit for the day. The paddle back was a bit rough, but cool breezes blowing down out of the mountains and a heron who played hopscotch with me along the shoreline made it more than tolerable.

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