Kayak Canoe Alabama

Sunday, December 11, 2005

Fish River (upper)

Saturday, December 10, 2005 brint.adams@us.army.mil

Today warmed up nicely to the mid-50's by noon, partly sunny and only a slight breeze. Steve met Linda and I at the intersection of Hwy 181 and CR 32, southeast of Fairhope, AL. We continued east on CR 32, to just before the bridge and turned down to Keeney Drive East to the put-in at the Baldwin County Wetlands Conservation Park.

We started out at 11:30 AM heading north on Fish River, under the bridge and past many houses and boathouses festively decorated. This was the first time for us to paddle this area since before the hurricanes of the past two seasons. The area did not look too bad, either from Katrina flood surge or from Ivan winds. We decided to try Polecat Creek first and wound our way around the narrow waterway, into ever increasingly stronger current. Once we passed under the CR 9 bridge, we continued for about a quarter mile further and decided to stop along the way for lunch. There were plenty of signs that a hungry beaver was also around. We thought we might even find him house or dam-building, but no such luck.

Upon returning back southwest to Fish River, we started back downriver until we reached the mouth of Cowpen Creek along the west bank just north of the CR 32 bridge. This is another beautiful clearwater tributary, however with almost no current. We paddled back through many tight s-turns past a small but pretty sand beach peninsula, before coming across a large treefall across the creek. That was enough for us, so we turned and headed back out to the Fish River and down to wetlands county park. On the way back we paddled underneath about 75-100 buzzards circling high overhead. The overall trip took us about 2:40 paddling time covering 6.66 miles. This was a great little trip on a beautiful afternoon.

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