(08/26/05) Where are We? - Why We Haven't Been Paddling -see below NEW
(07/15/05) Mississquoi Bay - An International Experience - see below
(07/12/05) Incredible Cliffs - Westport to Essex - Coming Soon
(07/07/05 Keeler Bay Revisited - see below
(06/27/05) Island Hopping - Knight and Butler Islands - see below
(06/24/05) The Southern Lake - Whitehall to Bensons Landing - see below
(06/20/05) Crown Point Bridge to Arnold Bay - see below
(06/15/05) A Short Paddle in a Mini Downpour - see below

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(06/15/05) A Short Paddle in a Mini Downpour - Margy and I are very frustrated that we have not been able to take our first "official" kayak of the season yet. It is already mid June and we are woefully behind our own expectations. Now that we are finally both in the same place at the same time, and have reserved time on our schedules, the weather is not cooperating.

In frustration at the wet weather, my dog Sophie and I ventured out for a short kayak two days ago. After being assured by the weather report and Internet weather radar that there were no thunderstorms hiding behind the cloud filled sky, but realizing we might get wet before we got home, we set off from Crescent Bay to paddle around Providence Island.

The water close to shore was covered with a thin layer of pine pollen. It looked like French's yellow mustard and there was no way to avoid stepping in it to get in the kayak. Sophie, who is only about 10 inches tall and has white hair like fur, looked like she had on long yellow socks by the time she jumped into my lap with her wet little pine pollen coated legs. It was a hot, humid, but amazingly still evening. We passed a neighbor supervising a small army of strong young men putting his dock in for the season, and skirted along close to the rocky shore of Phelps Point to make sure the 460,000 million year old fossils embedded in the rocks there were still where we had left them last fall. A heron suddenly flew off about 5 yards in front of us as we rounded the first point. We had clearly interrupted his dinner, but the banquet table was big so he flew on up the shore about 50 yards and resumed fishing. There was not another boat in ear shot or sight as we headed across the Narrows to Providence Island. Once at the north end of Providence, Sophie became a little uneasy with how close to shore I was paddling in my effort to find fossils there as well. She gave me a disapproving look and licked my nose each time the kayak scrapped the top of a submerged rock or I had to push us off from the rocks with my paddle.

As we got about two-thirds of the way down the west side of the island the clouds were looking quite dark to the west and clearly laden with water. The New York shore had disappeared. I stopped paddling for a moment and listened to the sound of the rain in the distance hitting the water. There was no wind to mask the sound and I could hear it getting louder as it approached, like a train coming down the tracks. Without waves of any kind I could see the splash created by each rain drop as it hit the water, the splashes rising higher as the drops became bigger. Suddenly we were engulfed in the downpour, the splashes and the noise. It was awesome... except that we were getting very wet very quickly. Fortunately the air was warm but it did not take long for Sophie to look like a drowned rat. I belatedly tried to put her under the front deck of the kayak to get her out of the rain. She only agreed once I turned her around so that her head stuck out and she could see what was going on even if she was looking backwards. She seemed to appreciate not getting pounded by the now very heavy rain. I kept paddling south fasinated by the rain which was getting heavier and heaveir. Just before we reached the southern end of the island, I decided that perhaps the prudent thing to do was to turn around. The clouds definitely were darker and the rain stronger in front of us. It was raining to the north but the clouds were brighter, although it was hard to determine which way they were moving because without wind, they were not moving anywhere fast. As we approached the Narrows again the rain seem to let up some. The pattern of rain drops on the water was both intriguing and beautiful. It was as if there where two rains occurring at the same time, a light rain which created small closely spaced drops each producing a little splash, and a heavier rain with big drops and big splashes interspersed with much less frequency. Close to the Providence shore there were soft swirls of yellow pine pollen as if someone had gently drawn a circle in the water with a big stick. Ah, my eye teeth for a waterproof camera.

As we rounded Jackson Point headed home our neighbor was still sitting in his little zodiac supervising the army of dock installers. We exchanged wet waves, as if to say "yes, we are both crazy but isn't it fun." and Sophie and I headed home to get dry.
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(06/20/05) Crown Point Bridge to Arnold Bay - Crown Point Bridge to Arnold Bay – Finally..our first "offical" trip of the season. It felt good to be back on the water. Incompatible schedules and poor weather have kept us from getting on the water earlier this spring. Regardless, we still have high hopes of finishing our journey around Lake Champlain by late September. Unfortunately, distractions abound however. For starters, we both have a daughter getting married in the next 3 months. But we are not easily deterred, even by daughters, and once we get ourselves on the water we are in another world, weddings, work and civic responsibilities quickly forgotten.

We started at the F&W Fishing Access, just under the rusty Crown Point Bridge on the Vermont side of the lake. (I have come to the conclusion that all bridges are rusty underneath, a somewhat disconcerting discovery.) Even though it was Monday, it was the last day of the Lake Champlain Fishing Derby and there were few available parking places. We stayed out of the fishermen’s way, launched quickly and immediately had a "floating lunch" as we took in the view of Port Henry to the west and let the gentle south wind give us an effortless start to our 13 mile journey north to Arnold Bay where we had left Margy's car.

The day was sunny and hot, and after two weeks of crumby, cool, wet weather, it seemed that everyone, human and otherwise, was taking advantage of the warmth to dry out and sooth the soul. We saw fishermen, cormorants, gulls, bikini clad teenage girls, adults reclined in chairs reading by the shore, an osprey, an eagle, half a dozen king fishers, a muskrat, an oriole, wild irises and daisies, many merganser ducks, and one adult with about 20 goslings trailing close behind in what looked like a huge duck train pulled by the mama engine. As we rounded our first point of land a dog started barking at us. About 3 minutes later we startled a great blue heron from his fishing spot. He flew off about 20 yards in front of us. It is interesting that the dog’s barking had not frightened him off but rather us gliding quietly by. Clearly the dog was part of this heron’s regular environment and we were not.

The view to the west from the Panton shore is beautiful. We could see several layers of mountains, the first fairly close to the New York shore. Each range appeared sharp and crisp. Shortly after we started we heard the whistle of the first of two trains that passed us headed north on the west side of the lake. It was a long freight train. Margy mentioned once again that we should take the the train from Plattsburgh down to Port Henry sometime, to see our lake from yet another perspective.

The view to the east was not as compelling. The Vermont shore we passed had some surprisingly long stretches of undeveloped land, always a welcome sight to us, but it was also punctuated with a significant number of new MacMansions, almost all with shorelines built up with large rocks to protect against erosion. To our delight we discovered that because of the 10-20 foot rise on the shoreline, if we paddled right next to the shore we could avoid seeing the houses almost all of which were well set back from the shore. We also passed some areas of older camps that blended nicely into the landscape. Their longevity and smaller scale seemed to give them more legitimacy.

About half way through our trip, when we were both feeling the effects of having not kayaked for any significant distance since last October, I decided a little chocolate was in order. I am the supplier, keeper and distributor of chocolate on all trips, a responsibility I take very seriously. We pulled together for the first distribution of the day but before we knew it, much to our dismay, one square of rich, dark Lindt 70% chocolate was on its way to the bottom of Lake Champlain. We had totally botched our handoff and chocolate does not float. What a disappointing discovery. The water was only 2 feet deep but alas, the shale bottom did not help our dark chocolate stand out in any way so we were forced to abandon it. I hope chocolate is not as bad for fish and turtles as it is supposed to be for dogs. If so we had unintentionally polluted the lake in a very strange way.

Just south of Arnold Bay, we came upon Mud and Rock Islands, two small islands about half a mile off shore. Both have been conserved by the Lake Champlain Land Trust. At first glance they are very different. Mud Island is like an island within an island. There is a large mound of dirt in the middle of the island about the size and shape of a beaver lodge. The rest of the island is low to the water and surrounded by a shale beach, most of which was under water because of the high lake level (98 ft.) due to recent rains. The island looks like it could easily be eroded away in a few years. Rock Island on the other hand, consisted of 15-20 foot high rock cliffs. On closer observation however we concluded that both islands had shale bases with a layer of soil on top. Because of its added height, Rock Island had just not been subjected to the erosion of its top soil by constant wave action. Rock island must have been thrust up higher in the last plate tectonic upheaval.

We finally arrived at Arnold Bay about 4 hours after we had started. My arms, legs and back were ready for a change of position. Actually my whole body was screaming at me that it was time to stop. I was out of both food and water and my energy level, after 4 hours in the hot sun, was sinking rapidly. Once in the bay we sighted what looked like a slew of turtles sunning themselves on a rather large rock sticking up in the water about 20 yards off shore. We slowly and quietly paddled closer, fully expecting that what we wishfully hoped were turtles, would turn out to be small rocks. They were larger than any turtles I had ever seen on Lake Champlain or anywhere in Vermont for that matter, and they clearly were not spooked by our approach – rocks for sure. Much to our amazement and delight they were indeed turtles, three big turtles with shells about 8-10 inches in diameter and about 4-5 smaller turtles piled on top of the larger ones. (Margy was not able to immediately identify what kind they were.) Maybe, after two weeks of rainy weather, they were as happy to be soaking up the sun today as we were. They seemed in no hurry to leave despite our approach. Finally, one at a time, they started to move off the rock as we got closer. One little guy tipped over in his attempt to leave, landing upside down at the edge of the rock. Resting on his shell, legs waving frantically, he struggled to roll himself over. I remember one very wet day about 3 years ago when I was backpacking with my daughters on the east side of Camel’s Hump. I slipped on a wet root, and fell, backpack first into a soft bed of wet ferns. I totally sympathized with that little turtle but figured he did not want my help in righting himself.

From the turtle rock it was a short paddle to our take out. Margy hung around watching another small turtle for what seemed like an eternity while I unloaded my kayak and waited for her. There were two fishermen waiting also. Apparently they too had spotted a car at the Arnold Bay Fishing Access but had left their car keys back where they had started their trip about 4 miles down the shore. They were waiting for one of their wives to bring the keys to them. Despite the temptation, I feel too vulnerable to make a sassy comment here. We are in totally sympathy with anyone who mistakenly leaves the keys behind. We have not done it yet but we are paranoid enough about the potential that we check at least 5 times before we push off from our “put in” place to make sure we have the keys to the car we are paddling to. Knock on wood…….

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Unauthorized guests

Thin layers of shale on the Panton shore

Mud and Rock Islands
Panton Shore

Turtles, just like us, taking advantage of the first nice day in weeks.

We finally and suddenly emerge out of the forest into downtown Benson Landing: a bridge, state launch site, parking lot, and about 10 seasonal homes. I park, jumped into Cathy’s car and we head south again on dirt and then paved roads. On what looks like the shortest route, the road gets narrower and narrower, we cross a collapsed culvert, very carefully, and then meet our nemesis: slurry mud of unknown depth. Well we’ve been considering turning back and now is the time. We backtrack and find another route.

Finding lock 12 is no problem; it’s one of the first signs of civilization when entering Whitehall. After the usual procedures of launching from a commercial site, we glide out into the land of swamp and stream. With a backward look at the lock, quiet at the moment, we head north from this historic tip of Lake Champlain.

Again, we experience the difficulty of identifying where the water ends and the land begins. The steady south wind keeps the trees swaying and the water rippling and everything is in motion. Looking up the mouth of the Poultney, we get our first glimpse of another theme for the day: cliffs. This watery world at the bottom of Lake Champlain is indeed a place of swamp, marsh, and surprisingly dramatic cliffs.

The South Bay stretches between foothills to our west, an adventure for another day. As the swamps give way to marshes, we encounter milfoil in the channel. The channel is also murky so that we don’t always know that it is there, but we can feel and occasional tug on our paddles and other times, it is close to the surface. But milfoil is minor compared to our other first: water chestnut. As residents of the northern end of Lake Champlain, we have never seen it before. Our first reaction is “what pretty leaves.” This is before we see whole bays covered with mats of it, thick enough to hold dead fish and to support a rolling styrofoam cup. Pulling it out of the water is a task because the stems are so long and flexible, each supporting a good sized cluster of leaves. It is truly a menace.

Other paddling days we look at passing boats from a distance. Today, because the channel is often narrow, they will be close and we are a bit anxious about the wake of passing boats. Luckily, we never see a large boat. A couple of medium-sized multi-deck, fishing inboards pass, the first most courteously slowing way down. The second roars by as if we do not exist, but the channel is wider here. The bass boats are too small to make a difference.

Osprey nesting platforms rise above a marsh. We see 5, one of which is occupied and its residents give us a great display. The female is pretty irate at our approach, rises to the edge of the nest and continuously squawked at us. At one point she flew briefly and returned. The male approached and we had the privilege of watching it try to land a large stick, unfortunately unsuccessfully.

We watch our companion of other paddles, the Montrealer, and a freight train glide by on the New York side. The only stationary civilization is a town identified as Dresden on our maps. Without further information, we wondered if these few buildings were left from a time when they could have housed railroad workers. In spite of this bit of civilization, the scenery of the day is quite wild. At times it reminds me of the Allagash River in northern Maine, a true wilderness river. The only other breaks are the large stationary buoys and the floating buoys. Their numbers help us find our locations on the map and we count them down to the last at Benson Landing.

Just beyond the tiny settlement, the dramatic cliffs of Dresden rise directly out of the water on either side of the main channel. They stand in contrast to many of the other cliffs which further much further back from the channel behind water chestnut filled bays, marshland, and swamp. We could spend a lot of time investigating some of the intriguing openings along the shore.

The water widens as we approach Benson Landing. The kayaks are loaded and we take the slightly longer but passable route back to Whitehall. The trip home on main roads reminds us of just how long Lake Champaign is.

Lock #12, Northern End of champlain Canal, Whitehall, NY

Water Chestnut, Invasive speices found in southern lake.

Osprey coming in for a landing,

We were on the Inland Sea today and it looked huge in comparison. We started at City Bay, a rather presumptuous name for any location in North Hero, Vermont. Usually it is a bustling place (by island standards of course) on weekends but today there was far more wildlife than human life. This was a simple half day loop trip with a starting point 5 miles from home. It was sunny and warm with a light south wind - a real powder puff of a day. Maybe that was the problem. We were pretty casual about the preparation for the trip and as a result we forgot so many things it was comical. And it was not just one of us whose mind was not fully engaged before we hit the water. We both lacked focus.

Margy forgot both her water bottle and Gatorade and had to buy some at Hero’s Welcome. I forgot my Gatorade too but did not even realize it until we were on the water, too late to make a correction. And I had the water bladder for my camelback but had forgotten the backpack itself. At least I had the important part. I had also not recharged the camera batteries or deleted the pictures from Friday’s trip. We did have our paddles, sun block, spray skirts and sense of humor however.

We checked with Hero’s Welcome who said we were welcome to use their launch site as long as we parked our car in the far back parking area behind the building. This was in welcome contrast to the $10 we had to pay at the marina at Lock #12 in Whitehall three days ago. We launched at the boat ramp, avoiding two dead fish that were floating in front of the ramp and headed straight out to Knight Island, about a mile and a half due east. We passed two families of Canada geese, each with about 6-8 goslings. The first family was swimming south away from me, perpendicular to the modest waves, lined up in a straight line with mama in the lead. It was like watching a line of mini roller coaster cars from the rear as each gosling in succession, disappeared into a troth and then popped up over the crest of each new wave.

Knight Island was conserved by the Lake Champlain Land Trust and the Nature Conservancy in 1990 and then given to the state. It is now a state park with primitive camp sites. A former Park ranger is quoted as saying “The beauty of the island is that there’s nothing there.” It looked very inviting and unlike so many paddles we have taken of late, there were lots of places to land had we wanted to. But it was too early in our trip for landing so we paddled around to the east and continued counterclockwise around the island until we got to the northwest corner. From there we headed north to the northwest corner of Butler Island and then started to make our way around it counterclockwise as well.

Butler ’s shoreline is lined with camps all of which blend into the landscape well. The only access is by boat and there is no electric except what people generate themselves. We saw many solar panels but no wind turbines. We saw one pontoon type barge filled with building supplies being pulling out to the island by a motor boat.

By the time we were half way along the east shore my camera had run out of memory and I had to find some shade to stop in and delete old pictures, not an easy task on this rare cloudless day. While I was doing that Margy spotted a pair of loons. We are getting much better at distinguishing between loons and cormorants at a distance. Once we rounded the northwest corner the south wind seemed to pick up and make us do some honest paddling but it did not last. On the way back down the west side of Butler we saw two ducks that Margy could not immediately identify except she was sure they were not the mergansers we were accustom to seeing. At the southwest corner of Butler we turned west and paddled over to little Dameas Island. As soon as we got close to shore we spotted a huge turtle on a rock. I year ago I probably would not have noticed but Margy has trained me to think of all large rocks surrounded by water close to shore as potential turtle sundecks. We started our unspoken routine of silently moving forward seeing how close we could get to the turtle before it slid off the rock and under the water. This guy was not easily intimidated and we got quite close. On the way back around the island after stopping for lunch in the waist high water off the northern shore (the land is posted so we did not go ashore) we looked carefully hoping the turtle had returned to his rock. Much to our delight he was on another rock just a little further north and there was yet another large turtle on a rock near him. So once again we initiated our turtle routine and this time got even closed before they both disappeared under the water. This seems to be the season if not the year for turtles. We definitely need to get a turtle book and learn to identify them better.

As we progressed south, our two unidentified ducks reappeared on the west side of Knight. Margy stopped and watched them with her binoculars for a long time hoping to identify them. It was not until we got back and she had access to her bird book that she identified them as Lesser Scaup which, according to “Birds of Vermont”, at least use to be rare in Vermont May through September. While Margy was looking at the Scaup, I spotted 2 great blue heron sitting on different branches in a huge cottonwood tree on the shore. One flew away and then the other. Great Blue Heron are seem too big to be hanging out in trees. They just look out of place there, even though that is their natural habitat unless they are fishing. They flew off to another tree and then eventually left that one also.

By 2:00 pm we were headed back across the lake to City Bay. Then temperature inside the car must have been 120 F. We bought a cold ice tea at Hero’s Welcome and headed home both more tired than we had expected due to the 90 temperature we had been paddling in for over 5 hours. This is a beautiful part of Lake Champlain, abounding in wildlife and natural beauty. It is hard to believe we had never paddled it before.

Campsite on Knight Island State Park

Interesting Rock on shore of Knight Island

Turtle

According to a fisherman we passed, the fish that were putting on such a show for us were Bowfin, a primitive fish which can grow to 3 feet in length. The fisherman said there were15-18 pounders where we were paddling. It occurred to me that those fish were a good deal heavier than my dog Sophie. No wonder I jumped when they did.

One great blue heron kept his distance from us as he fished the rich waters. We saw him fly off and return to a different spot 4 times in the course of our short visit.  Margy spotted a black crowned night heron on the shore, and quite by accident, we got a little too close to 3 tiny black and white duck chicks of some sort. Their mother was no where in sight and they were so well camouflaged that we did not see them until we were too close.  Once we spotted each other, they took off in one direction and we in another as we did not want to frighten them further.

Leaving the marsh behind we paddled north along the small point of land and then followed the south shore of the bay. Except for the marshy area (in what I call the ‘inner bay”) the shore is lined with older camps of small or moderate size (with one or two exceptions). There was a large old wooden raft anchored at the base of Kibbe Point. I got the feeling that, like ours, it was used by the entire neighborhood. Clearly the effort to put it in the water each summer and take it out each fall would have taken a neighborhood effort. It had a 5 foot pole sticking up in the middle with a solar landscaping light on top. I thought that was pretty clever and a good way to make it visible to boats at night. I thought it was so clever that our raft now sports a new solar light atop a 4 foot pole. As gull deterrents, the raft had windsocks flying from all 4 corners and mesh netting draped from the light pole out to all 4 corners. I was not sure how people actually got on the raft without getting trapped in the netting but I did not see any sign that gulls had been there either!

The rocks on the inner side of Kibbe Point, thin layers of shale with calcite drizzles, looked very similar to what can be found on the west side of Allen Point on Crescent Bay in South Hero. In fact Kibbe Point and Allen Point run in a straight line to each other, north to south. Once we reached the end of Kibbe Point we turned back and paddled over to and then around Kellogg Island, a small island with a camp on its north end, that sits in the middle of Keeler Bay. It had a pretty spectacular view. Two men were fishing from a small boat on the west side but reported no luck at all.

On the north side of the bay, we stopped to watch a heron catch a fish in the shallow water. Holding the fish perpendicular to its beak, it flew back to shore and then flipped the fish 90 degrees so it went into its mouth and slide down its long neck. The neck budged as the fish went down. It looked a little painful to me but the heron did not seem to mind.

We got back to the fishing access just as thunderheads were building up over Mount Mansfield.

Black Crowned Night Heron,
Keeler Bay

El grass and lilly pads
Keeler Bay

Solar powered raft with gull discouraging net

Summer 05 continued - Continued on page 4 .

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