09/24/2011 - Dog River and McCullough Creek

Launch: Dog River Park (formerly Luscher Park)
Waterway at Launch Site: Dog River
Launch Cost: Free
Destination: Celebrating National Estuary Day by leading a bird watching club paddle going south on Dog River to Moore Creek and then up McCullough Creek and back.
Distance: 8.4 miles (round trip).
Trip Rating: Easy 1/2 day trip.
Time Paddling: 3 hours
Weather: Sunny, occasional light winds. High tide. Current minimal. No waves - waters mostly slick. Water temp about 83 degrees.
GPS Track: To view or download the GPS track of this trip, Click Here.

Header Image - a beautiful day for a paddle. Thanks for joining the paddle Wendy. I enjoyed it.

I paddled to the launch site for the club trip and got to see the sun rise on the way there. Nice.

Here is a species of duck that often gets an unjustified bad reputation. To read some interesting facts about Muscovy Ducks, Click Here. They really do seem to be intelligent.

I met up with Wendy at Dog River Park and then we took off on a beautiful cool relaxing morning paddle.

There were a few boaters out but not as many as you would think. We saw about a half dozen boats.

The water surface was mirror like on McCullough Creek. Unfortunately the recent high tides from Tropical Storm Lee and heavy rains left more trash in the upper end than I'm used to seeing. 

Also distracting was the smell of raw sewage coming from somewhere. I've never smelled sewage in McCullough Creek before. That was embarrassing. Quite a few wood ducks came flying out of the nearby brush in a loud way keeping us on our toes (so to speak) as we eased along in McCullough Creek.

A tri-colored heron stood tall and very still. We almost didn't see the heron as we passed closely by.

Wendy looks at an Osprey Eagle sitting on a tree limb. That tree is on an island owned by one of Wet Willie's band members - Rick Hirsch. I lived a few houses away from where the band used to practice on Woodline Drive when they first formed a little over 40 years ago. Wow, time flies. Keep On Smiling!

We saw a several great egrets today (big white birds). I counted up the number of different types of birds we saw on this short 3 hour paddle and it added up to 15. We heard several more types. The River Landing Condominiums can be seen in the background of this photo.

Turtles have stunningly good eye sight so it worried me to see this turtle looking up so intensely as I paddled home after the club trip. Maybe this turtle saw NASA objects falling...