Kayak launch sites in Mobile?

The shoreline of the Mobile Convention would make a decent kayak launch spot for Mobile River access. Instead this small and rare City of Mobile shoreline sits idle and remains lined with recyceable trash all year long. What a pathetic waste of a valuable City of Mobile waterfront asset.

This is the trashy Mobile Bay shoreline seen from the wooden walkway at the City of Mobile's Arlington Park. Arlington Park is an embarrassing black eye on the City of Mobile's promised committment to deal with its community storm water trash pollution. Ignore, ignore and ignore the waterfront trash pollution year after year is a clear indicator of lousy City of Mobile leadership and a community that absolutely does NOT give a shit about their community's polluted waterfront properties despite Lawsuits and Fines by environmental groups.

No wonder why the bayside boat and kayak launch at McNally Park is rarely used. No one seems to maintain this City of Mobile Park launch site.

As usual, the fishing pigs who use the City of Mobile's Helen Wood Park keep it littered with trash. What kayaker trusts parking and launching a kayak at a poorly maintained trashy park?

I did find one kayak launch site in Mobile that was free of trash. Sadly the Robinson Bayou launch site is rarely used because parking for the relatively new launch site is poorly marked.

The community of Mobile should be happy that I am not in charge of the City's waterfront parks. If I was in charge all the parks would be shut down until the community implemented a plan to keep the parks free of litter. People will never appreciate the things they have until they loose them. I can guarantee you if all the waterfront parks in Mobile became no trespassing zones there would be public outcry, especially from the boaters who no longer have places to launch the expensive boats.

City leaders should be clear what they expect from their community with regards to trash in parks. As long as City of Mobile leaders allows its community to freely litter City parks without any consequence to those violating the law, the fishing pigs and retards in Mobile who break the litter law will continue to do so unabated. The continued trashing of City parks comes at significant cost to its taxpayers and tourism. 

What Mobile needs is some volunteer litter police in all its parks to document the litter law violators. If the volunteer's video of some asshole littering in a park results in a conviction and $500 fine, the City should reward the volunteer $100 for each conviction. I can guarantee you if the Mobile community was aware that people of all ages and colors were secretly trying to get video of people littering, littering in public parks would become a rare thing in Mobile.

I wonder how many "litter cams" the City of Mobile has deployed in littering hot spots...

05/23/2010 - Mobile Bay Double Crosser

Launch: McNally Park
Destination: Across Mobile Bay to Fairhope and back.
Weather: Ideal conditions.
To see or download the track of this trip, Click Here.
Caution: I would not advise undertaking this trip unless you have plenty of open water experience and are capable of 20+ mile kayak trips. It is 10.4 miles crossing (one way) from McNally Park to Fairhope Pier.

Header Image

1) Water temperatures are good, tides were good, forecast was good and I felt like burning some calories while listening to Sunday morning Jazz.

2) On the water at sunrise. Nice!

3) Had to slow down for a barge in the ship channel on the way over to Fairhope. Interesting name for the tugboat.

4) Got to see another ship on the way back as it was heading up the ship channel toward Mobile (the city skyline barely visible on the horizon).

5) The slick waters on the bay made for a wonderful mesmerizing trip over to Fairhope as the clouds were flowingly distorted on the water's surface.

6) On the way back across the bay the winds were 0 mph. Open water kayaking conditions just do not get any better than this.

7) Cute little family of geese by the Fairhope Pier. Oil booms can be seen in the background. There were no booms near the Fairhope beach.

8) A seagull up close.

9) The trip conditions were so nice that I decided to drop down on the return crossing and loop around Gaillard Island. It meant more mileage, but when you are in kayaking nirvana, life is better than good. Birds galore as usual around Gaillard Island.

10) Brown and white pelicans, terns, herons, ibis, ruddy turnstones, egrets, gulls, and more can be seen around Gaillard Island. It is a birder's paradise.

11) On the south side of Gaillard Island crews were putting out oil booms. Someone on this lead boat hollered at me so I headed over. He said the boom was solid all the way to the southwest corner with no way to get around it because it was tied off to the shore.

12) I asked if I could just paddle over it and he no problem, so to the right I went. It was easy to paddle over the oil boom.

04/19/2009 - Alligator Bayou

Launch: Hoppes Launch (northeast side of Dog River at Dauphin Island Parkway)
Cost: $5
Route: Across Dog River and up Alligator Bayou and back.
Weather: Clouds giving way to sun, 60s-70s, breezy, higher than normal water.

1) Went to McNally’s Park to launch and the launch area was full of debris which explains why the parking lot was empty. Decided I’d rather pay $5 to launch at a clean and maintained site – went to Hoppes.

2) Hoppe's Launch – no trash here and there was a snowy egret there to greet people.

3) Snowy egret taking a poke at some minnows. It missed.

4) Pelican pushing off from the water to get airborn.

5) I read a paper that questioned if a large nearby nursery’s fertilizer runoff is causing excessive growth in Alligator Bayou. There was indeed very dense vegetation in the water – a type of vegetation I don’t see much in other parts of the delta. But that vegetation was strictly in the upper part of Alligator Bayou. There are canals that run along part of the nursery where one would expect to see the same dense water vegetation, but the canals didn’t have any. There are parts of creeks completely vegetated in the Delta that are in far worse shape than Alligator Bayou. None of the waterways around the Nursery were not blocked by any vegetation.

6) Whatever the vegetation is in the water, when it dries out on land, Swamp Sparrows make good use of it.

7) Some of the canals around the nursery provide a beautiful view of flowers. With a little planning in the arrangement of flowers, kayaking the nursery canals could be a major attraction for kayakers while providing good public relations for the Nursery.

8) The only negative thing about the Nursery that I saw was loose plastic planters that were lining the edge of the canals in some areas. The Nursery should have their people clean the edge of their property bordering waterways. This isn’t trash that a coastal cleanup effort should deal with. Trash wise, Alligator Bayou was very clean.

9) Saw lots of fish and ducks in Alligator Bayou.

10) If planning to paddle the Alligator Bayou area, it would be wise to have a route mapped out. There are enough canals around the area that one could get lost. The end of one of these canals comes out right at Hamilton Blvd.

11) There are houses along some of the canals that make you want to stop and take a photo like this one. Just four colored chairs turns ordinary into eye pleasing. My compliments go to the owner of this house.

12) Can’t afford a house near the water? Get a mobile home. This mobile home setup looks seriously flawed in terms of being top heavy, but maybe they are not done setting it up yet.

13) Here is another example of taking ordinary and turning it into extraordinary. A partially blown over tree was turned into a beautiful work of art. 

14) There is a wide variety of things to see in the Alligator Bayou area and the open water of Mobile Bay is only a mile away from the mouth of Alligator Bayou.

15) A Dog River sunset.

16) Sunset at Hoppes Launch. Two thumbs up on this paddle and a boo-hiss to the caretakers of McNally’s Park Launch.

09/10/2006 – McNally Park

Launch: McNally Park boat ramp. Launch Cost: Free. Route: Southwest to the northern end of Gaillard Island, then south along the west side of the island to the southwest corner, about the only place where you can get out of the kayak and stretch the legs. Then west to the Theodore Industrial Canal, then back up to McNally Park. Distance: 23.7 miles. Average Speed: 3.6 mph. Time: Approx 7 hrs. Pace: Moderate. Weather: Cloudy, waves choppy out of the southeast, current was minimal. The weather looked threatening at the beginning and the end, but it never rained.

(1) Above left. Herons like to eat a crab in one gulp. This crab was a little too big for one bite. (2) Above right. Pelicans are the typical residents of Gaillard Island where there are thousands of them.

(3) Above left. Note the detail on this rather interesting flower known as the Fen Rose, aka Kosteletzkya virginica. (4) Above right. The sulfur butterflies took a liking to the fen roses.

(5) Above left. These silos along the Theodore Industrial Canal are part of the Holcim plant I think and they are rather massive when kayaking next to them. (6) Above right. The largest water fall in the area can be found in the Theodore Industrial Canal. It is definitely not kayaker friendly if you are thinking about doing a little white water kayaking.

(7) Above left. This is the first year I’ve seen these huge walking sticks and there are a bunch of them around. I didn’t realize there was such a size difference between the male and female. (8) Above right. Had to take a photo of these nice green seeds that had pointed texture.

(9) Above left. Purple berries on a sumac plant. (10) Above right. The clouds started to look threatening again and there was lightning off in the distance. This caused me to pick up the pace substantially. Made it back before the storm. This was a nice trip.

08/13/2005 – McNally - Gaillard - TIC

Launch: McNally Park which is just north of the Buccaneer Yacht Club. Launch Cost: Free. Route: Across Mobile Bay and Dog River Channel to Gaillard Island, around the island, across to Theodore Industrial Canal, then back. Distance: 23.2 miles. Average Speed: 3.1 mph. Time: Approx 7.5 hrs. Pace: Leisurely. Weather: Sunny. No breeze. Humid. High heat index.

(1) Above left. A beautiful sunrise on Mobile Bay. (2) Above right. Gaillard Island, still a couple of miles away, is about 5 miles southeast from McNally Park. If you like to see Pelicans, you need to kayak to Gaillard Island, home to 5,000 to 10,000 pelicans and thousands of other birds. It is an experience you won’t forget.

(3) Above left. Lining the entire perimeter of Gaillard Island are large rocks which make it very difficult to land a kayak or any boat. Humans are not welcome on this “dredge material” island, which is how the Pelicans like it. Besides, if you went onto the island, the bugs would eat you alive. (4) Above right. A brown pelican, up close.

(5) Above left. None of the photos I took can express the eerie feeling I felt while kayaking along side hundreds of pelicans. It felt as if I was in a zoo and they were all watching me. (6) Above right. Photo merge taken on the south side of Gaillard Island. We spent a fantastic hour pedaling/paddling together like this. It is because of one man’s vision that I got to experience kayaking with the pelicans. For more info on man made Gaillard Island, click Seabird Haven, Pelicans Thrive, Corps of Engineers, and a power point slide show can be seen at Faulkner.

(7) Above left. A couple of drilling platforms that stand out like a sore thumb. (8) Above right. Polar King, a cable laying vessel, docked by the entrance to the Theodore Industrial Canal.

(9) Above left. When you need to take a break, step onto the pristine beaches of the Theodore Industrial Canal and enjoy your view. Surely fish need iron in their diet besides mercury, right? (10) Above right. McNally Park boat launch after the wonderful trip.