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Mason Neck to Pohick Bay



Today I finally did a trip I've had on my mind for a long time. There's a benefit to one-way shuttle paddles - you park a car at your destination point, drive back to put-in and since you're only paddling one direction you're able to do twice as long a trip. The disadvantage of the shuttle approach is that at the end of the trip you have to drive as far as you've paddled to get back to your car. When I did Ralph's Patuxent paddle that meant retracing three days worth of paddling (50-60 miles) crammed into someone's truck in order to get me, my kayak and my car all back together again. The beauty of Mason Neck to Pohick is that it's around a peninsula and so while it's 11 miles of kayaking the put-in and take-out are only a couple of miles apart.

Tall Tom and I met up at 7:30 AM at Pohick Bay (as is our wont, we were both early). We swapped his kayak to my car while a doe grazed on a nearby lawn: Prelude to an Afternoon of Kayaking: A Fawn.  We deliberately did not enter the boat launch parking lot and so did not pay the launch fee via the honor system envelope (semi-honor system, it turns out ... more on that later). We left Tom's car in one of the regular, non-launch lots and headed over to Mason Neck, which for some bizarre reason does not open until 8 AM despite the fact that two of its significant user communities - bird-watchers and paddlers - tend to be early morning folk. We got to the Mason Neck gate at about 7:45 so we put on sunscreen, took pictures of cicadas (in strong evidence there as they had been in St. Mary's a week or two earlier - but not in Arlington, fortunately) and generally killed time until they opened the gate at eight.

The first part of the trip, through Belmont Bay and around into the Potomac, is alongside a nature preserve and so the scenery is quite nice. It's a big nesting area for bald eagles and sure enough we saw at least half a dozen, some in mature plumage and some with the immature brownish feathers that make them look almost like ospreys. After you get out of the parkland area the shoreline becomes envy territory. We spent a lot of the rest of the trip drooling over the waterfront homes and wishing for a chance to live even in one of the boathouses, some of which rivaled our little inside-the-Beltway homes in size. About mid-way we took a quick break, quietly trespassing on private waterfront common area belonging to some community association.

On the final, northwestward leg of our journey on our way into Pohick Bay we ran into a Meetup group kayak outing led by the ever-gracious Andy. I had been vaguely aware that this event was happening - I'm sure I got an email notification of it - and so wasn't surprised to bump into other paddlers. They had spent most of their trip exploring up Pohick Creek and were just doing a little bit of exploring out into bigger water. Our friend Susan was part of this group as well and we stopped and chatted for a bit.

When we got back to Tom's car we found that he had been ticketed for failing to pay the launch fee! I guess the ranger had seen us messing with boats, seen the racks on Tom's roof, and had assumed we had launched our kayaks there. Truth be told, we probably we liable for the fee once we landed, but as of the time the ticket was issued we had not used the boat launch. NVRPA tickets are also sort of honor-systemy. I don't know if Tom paid or not.

As expected, the shuttle at the end was easy, a quick jaunt from Pohick to Mason Neck. Cheapskates that we are we grumbled at having to pay the four dollar entry fee just to retrieve the car; I momentarily thought about having Tom drop me outside the gate and then wait for me back near the main road but it's a mile and a half walk from the gatehouse to the parking lot and so we broke down and shelled out the four bucks. It might seem funny that two guys carrying thousands of dollars worth of gear ... kayaks, GPS, paddles, PFDs, etc. ... on our shiny newish cars would grouse about paying a four buck park entry fee, but hey, we are who we are. Next time I think I will bring a bicycle and ride it into Mason Neck to retrieve my car. And there will be a next time, because I can definitely see doing this nice little shuttle paddle again.


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