Because
my schedule this summer is pretty busy with other things I haven't signed up
for too many Chesapeake Paddlers Association camping trips. Fortunately, I had
a free weekend to go on Ralph's Belle Isle trip. Belle Isle State
Park is a pleasant little park right on the shores of the Rappahannock River in the Northern Neck of Virginia.
Friday
I made plans to carpool
with Susan G. I was expecting her to show up at 9:30, but she was at my door
at 9 AM. I guess there was a small miscommunication between us on timing, but no worries since I was
just about ready anyway. I95 was a mess all the way down due to construction and the 2 1/2 hour
trip wound up taking us 3 1/2 hours. We finally made it to the park at 1 PM,
ate lunch and set up camp. The campsites at Belle Isle all
have electric power. We didn't need it since the nights were cool, but we could
have brought an air conditioner as well as an electric coffee maker and big screen TV. Alas, no WiFi - how primitive!
We made
it out onto the water at about 3:30, launching into Mulberry Creek from the park, and kayaked for
about two hours in some light chop on the Rappahannock. Our timing getting back was fortuitous, as other people from
our group were returning at the same time. Ralph and Beth returned just ahead
of us and were loading their boats as were Mike and Linda. Steve, Jim and
Rosemarie hadn't been out on the water but had meandered down to the launch. As
Susan and I loaded our kayaks we also talked with another kayaker (not part of
our group) who was landing as we were coming in, a retired electrician named Hunter.
Hunter is from the local area and was a font of local history (like that
Stingray Point reputedly got its name when Capt. John Smith accidentally
stepped on a stingray there). Hunter sounded very southern Virginia. I am
certain that he would have pronounced "dog" to rhyme with
"vogue".
In the
evening we didn't all gather into a single big gathering as often happens on these trips.
Instead Susan and I went over and shared appetizers with Steven, Jim and Rosemarie.
The three of them had plans to make grilled chicken and pineapple kebobs, but something was
wrong with their grill. It was a little bit of a
comedy of errors as they experimented with the grill for a while. They had a working Coleman stove and ultimately changed the
menu to pan-fried chicken and pineapple. When they got the Coleman fired up and started cooking in earnest
Susan and I went back to our site and ate our pre-fab no-cook dinners (I had a cold
tortellini salad, and Susan had some sort of lentil and rice mash). Susan
retreated to her tent at about 9:30. I just can't turn in that early and so I
stayed up for a while reading and writing.
New
Yorker paranoia moment #1: When I was in the bath house washing up for the
night a teenage kid came in to get washed up. One of the things he did was to
wash off his large pocket knife, which he then dried using the air drier behind
me. So there I am, standing at the sink and looking in the mirror at this kid
behind me with a big knife and so of course I thought, "what would I do if
he made a move to stab me." Now I'm sure this was just a wholesome,
all-American kid with his pocket knife, but that's the way New York folks think.
Saturday
One thing
I've learned about Ralph's trips is that if you're on time, you're late. If
Ralph says he's going to head out at 9 AM, he's probably really going to roll
at 8:30, and the rest of the group is going to leave with him. This morning's
stated departure time was 9. Susan and I left at 8:40 and were near the back of
the group in arriving at the launch. The trip plan was to do go part way around
Fleet Island (at the mouth of the Rappahannock River). Ralph likes the outside
part of the island but considers the winding path through the marshes and guts
around the back of the island to be "hot, shallow and boring" and so
his plan was to do an out-and-back trip on the exposed side of the island. A
subset of the group liked the idea of circumnavigating the island and
so after our lunch break we split into two groups. Sue, Rich, Linda, Mike,
Wayne, Susan and I went for the circumnavigation, while Ralph, Dick, Jim,
Steven, and Rosemarie retraced their steps around the bay side of the island.
The hot, shallow and boring route turned out to be quite enjoyable. Yes, there
were a couple of shallow sections, but there were also pretty marshes, cute
houses, and a greater variety of scenery than the outside of the island
offered.
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| Semi-selfie with paddlers - off of Fleet Island |
New
Yorker paranoia moment #2: The place we launched is a public beach and so there
were lots of other people milling around there. A guy asked me some questions
about why we had such big kayaks, how far we were going to paddle, did I
make the wood boat, and so on (amazingly, no questions about the skinny stick
paddles). When he asked how long we were going to be out my first thought was
of course that he was asking so he'd know how much time he had to break into
our cars. Yes, it's groundless paranoia, but that the way New York folks think.
 |
| Taking a break: Ralph, Mike, Susan, Steven, Dick |
The
"hot, shallow and boring" group made it back first, since we were
paddling a slightly shorter distance and the other group had a slow paddler
with them. As we loaded our boats Sue made a lot of noise about stopping off
for ice cream on the way back to camp, which sounded like a great idea since
it had gotten pretty hot out. While we loaded we again chatted with the friendly folks at
the little beach: three middle-aged ladies from Richmond who were making a rather poor
showing of trying out a stand-up paddle board (and who offered to let me try
it), and two young women who asked Susan and me why only one of us got a
"sexy wood boat".
Susan and
I headed out and drove slowly as we passed through the town of Kilmarnock, on
the lookout for ice cream. Sure enough there was an old-fashioned soft serve
stand there. Old-fashioned but not old - we were waited on by owner, who told
us that the place had been open since 2007. I ordered a small vanilla with
Heath Bar, which is my usual order at the Frozen Dairy Bar in Falls Church -
except here the "small" was enormous. There was simply no way I was
going to finish that portion. Susan felt the same way about her overflowing
waffle cone. Linda and Mike showed up and the four of us ate together - and lo
and behold, the entire gigantic "small" portion and waffle cone were
consumed. Interestingly, Sue and Rich, whose idea this was, passed right by the
ice cream place and went right back to camp.
 |
| Artsy Photo: Fleet Island |
Our paddle had been fairly short
and so even with a stop for ice cream we got back to camp early, at around 3
PM. That left plenty of time for showering, relaxing, reading and writing (this
entry) before our 7:30 PM dinner reservation at The Lancaster Tavern. Susan and
I pulled into the tavern's parking lot at about 7:15. Ralph was already there,
of course. In fact, a number of our group were across the street from the
tavern examining the town's monument to the brave service of its sons in
defending the Southern way of life in the Civil War.
 |
| A swan on the "hot, boring and shallow" route |
Lancaster
is apparently a fairly old town. The tavern has been there in one form or
another since the 1790's, as have some of the other surrounding buildings. The
place is quaint and definitely a step above the usual kind of places I stop off
after paddling, but the food was mediocre and - perhaps our group of twelve
overwhelmed the staff - the service was exceptionally poor. Better than the dinner after last year's Potomac Swim where the
restaurant never served us food, but very slow and the food came out in dribs
and drabs. Still, it was a pleasant evening with good company. Conversation about
paddling topics, interesting launch sites, entertaining outdoors mishaps and so
on. A number of the people on the trip are birders and so there was some
conversation about birds that had been spotted. Was that a yellow-bellied
farshtunkeneh tanager, or a yellow-chested oysgeshpielt warbler? Out came the Audubon
apps on people's phones, followed by a debate about whether Audubon was really
a reliable guide. Jim's
contribution to the conversation, a description of the ticks he'd seen crawling around his campsite, creeped some
people out - perhaps not the best dinner conversation topic.
By the time we got
back to camp it was 9:45, which is late night for kayakers, so we all just went
back to our campsites and settled in for the night. Pretty night, lots of
stars. Saw the knife kid again. Is he stalking me?
Sunday
Our plan
for Sunday was to paddle from Carter's Wharf, which was on the way home and offered views
of some cliffs. We broke camp and rolled with the group (earlier than the announced departure time, of course). Susan's GPS couldn't find the address of the
landing, and so we started by navigating from the written directions and
promptly made a wrong turn. Fortunately others from the group were right behind
us and so we spotted that we were heading in a different direction. At that point we ditched Apple maps in favor of Google Maps,
which was able to find our destination. Interestingly, it said it was 15 miles
away and that it would take four hours and forty minutes to get there. This
unnerved Susan, but since the destination location looked right on the map and
I know that the travel time is a second order derived calculation, I advised
that we ignore the weird travel time and follow the app's route - which indeed
turned out to be correct.
 |
| Semi-Artsy shot of an abandoned boat |
These
"landings" that we launch from are generally historical ferry boat
landings, used way back when in the transport of tobacco, passengers, and who
knows what else up and down the river. Today they're typically just
out-of-the-way public launches. This one, despite the dilapidated condition of
the boat ramp, was pretty active as a launch for power boats. We paddled
upriver with the tide, pausing to look at the cliffs, which are said to contain lots of fossils (like Calvert Cliffs in Maryland). There were more eagles
out than I could count, plus the usual array of ospreys, herons and other water
birds - plus quite a few vultures. After looking at the cliffs we continued up the river, poking a little
bit into one creek then heading deep into another. The trip back down river was
a slog into the wind and against the tide. All told, this wound up being our
longest paddle of the weekend.
Susan and
I, having been burned on the way down, took Maryland 301 home rather than
risking I95 again. This was a pleasant, if slightly slower trip, and needless
to say the people who took I95 home reported that it was smooth sailing all the
way home.
Beautiful
weather, good company, and a pretty and remote part of Virginia to paddle in.
A few more pictures are here: https://plus.google.com/
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