An Urban Boychick Takes on the Outdoors

Paddling Route: Truxton Park to Chesapeake Bay Foundation My friend Ed's been off the water for a while dealing with various medical problems. He's finally feeling up to paddling so this weekend he organized a return to paddling "coming out party", paddling out of Truxton Park in Annapolis. Ed wasn't sure how much distance he'd be up for, but we had a laid back group that was ready to be supportive and take on whatever distance and speed turned out to be appropriate. I had never launched from Truxton before, as I'd heard it's kind of a madhouse of boats. That turns out to be true, but it's also a pretty cool (and free!) place to get on the water. Yes, I felt like I was playing kayaking Frogger here and there, but a few minutes of paddling takes you to "ego alley", the point in downtown Annapolis where the yachts tie up, there's some nice sightseeing in Spa Creek and from there it's a quick hop out into the Severn River and t...

Thomas Wolfe wrote that "Only the Dead Know Brooklyn." Well, it's certainly true that even most of its inhabitants don't know it all. I went out for a run while back in Brooklyn for a visit. I had never realized before how easy it is to get from the Hotel Gregory in Bay Ridge onto the Shore Parkway jogging and bike path that runs along New York Bay. In fact, I can't remember ever having explored this path before despite my having admired it a gazillion times while cruising along the adjacent Belt Parkway (never mind that I should have been watching the road, not the bike path). The path offers a gorgeous view of the harbor, punctuated by the towering visage of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. When it opened this bridge was the longest suspension bridge in the world and it's still the longest in the U.S. (the latter according to Wikipedia). There's a real difference in feel between Brooklyn and DC. In the early mornings the W&OD trail near my house is fi...

Today the forecast high temperature is triple digits, plus we  know we have to be out of the campsite by 3 PM, so we plan a slightly shorter paddle. We get as early a start as we can, which in mellow-out mode means we hit the put-in a little after 8:30 AM. Paddling once again out of Belle Isle we decide this time to cross the Rappahannock (Powhatan for "River in place with a few traffic lights") and explore a creek or two on the opposite shore. We quickly got some excitement when a pod of dolphins swam by! Coming up close and personal with dolphins when you're in a small boat is an incredibly cool experience. They're so graceful, so powerful. They're visible for such a brief instant each time they come out of the water that it almost seems like you've imagined them. Rob and I stopped and watched them until they were out of sight. The experience gave me a grin that lasted the rest of the day. Dolphin dead ahead We continued across the river, about a 3 mile...

Rob and I awaken and crawl out of our tents at about the time and have a quick breakfast of cereal and Ethiopian Yirgacheffe coffee. Seeing Rob pull out his camping bowl and folding camping cutlery makes me a little guilty for using a disposable plastic bowl and spoon. Isn't it wonderful how easy it is to find something to feel guilty about these days? Who knew that Mother Nature was a Jewish Mother? We're eager to get on the road because we have about an hour's drive to today's paddle. We load both boats onto one car so as to conserve gas (score one for Mother Nature!) and hit the road. Mathews is one of the less developed counties in Virginia, so rural that it may not have even a single traffic light. I say "may not" because whether it does or not depends on whether you count the lights at the end of the swing bridge to Gwynn's Island, as mentioned in this quote from the county web page: "Mathews County still does not have any traffic signal light...

Today was Day 1 of a three day kayaking and camping trip. My friend Rob and I planned this trip somewhat at the last minute in place of Kayaker Ed’s Thousand Islands trip, which was cancelled due to Kayaker Ed’s back problems. I wheeled into the Warsaw, VA McDonald’s about 15 minutes ahead of the planned meeting time to find Rob already there. A good sign – I like punctuality. We continued on to Belle Isle State Park, where the person checking us into the campground seemed almost surprised to see us. I later realized this was because, for some reason, the campground was all but deserted. I’m not sure why that would be the case for such a beautiful park in the middle of summer vacation season. But anyway, the check-in person assigned us a nice site and promised that she wouldn’t put anyone in the adjacent site – an easy promise to keep, given that it turned out that only four of the thirty sites were occupied. It felt like we had the place to ourselves. Lagoon After setting up our...