05/04/2010 - Moore Creek

Launch: Dog River Park (Formerly Luscher Park)
Destination: Moore Creek and tributaries which is approximately 3 miles to the south of Dog River Park and on the west side of Dog River.

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1) In case you are wondering why so many Dog River tributary paddles lately, I'm doing an analysis of Dog River and its tributaries, looking for boat ramps, parks, items of interest, while doing route mapping. What you see here is what I saw when launching this morning.

2) When returning 8 hours later, this was the view. Note the same bluish green cooler is still floating in the water. You'd think the city park would have trash crews visit the site every day to keep the park clean.

3) Ops, my bad. The city does have a crew cleaning the trash - they pulled up and started cleaning the boat ramps when I launched. For whatever reason, they quit the job and went elsewhere.

4) The critter that laid eggs on those snails (Click here for photo) apparently lays a LOT of eggs on everything, too. Anyone know what these eggs belong to? Tide was low this morning.

5) While Moore Creek itself was quite trashy (it is a linear canal like Eslavia Creek), some of the tributaries off Moore Creek, specifically, McCullogh Bayou and Creek were beautiful, and clean.

6) I paddled by a golf course and was rewarded with a dozen balls laying in the creek. I'll be using them in a few weeks.

7) Green Arrow Arum (Peltandra virginica) is one of those flowers you won't normally see unless you slow down and paddle along the banks because the flower looks like a stem from afar.

8) Why did the turtle cross the road? To get to the Shell station. (It is boycotting BP).

9) I enjoyed watching this heron fish for about 10 minutes and it caught quite a few minnows.

10) This green heron was fishing from a limb.

11) Moore Creek is that canal that goes under Interstate 10, just west of I-65. The creek always seem to have a dredge vessel in it, and trash.

12) End of the line. You can't paddle further than Halls Mill Creek unless you portage over one of the two waterfall drops. See the turtle?