05/06/2010 - Halls Mill Creek

Launch: John's (near Rangeline Road)
Destination: Halls Mill Creek

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1) Kayaks can go a lot of places power boats can't go.

2) Without focusing on the photo, you might think this is an image of an oil rig. It is actually a four story boat house.

3) You can see all sorts of eerie things on kayak adventures like this totem pole carved on an interesting piece of stump.

4) Also eerie is this jungle scene of plastic garbage bags strangling everything in this drainage channel, from ground level up 4 feet into the air. This spot is next to the on ramp from Rangeline road to Interstate-10. I can only speculate it looks like this because, 1) Waste Management 18 Wheelers first enter the Interstate 0.04 miles from here and 2) there is a WalMart store less than a mile away. That shouldn't serve as an excuse to justify this mess. The Truth about Plastic Bags thinks plastic grocery bags are getting a bad rap. Back on March 15, 2009 I documented this site when rain was flowing through it. These plastic bags will be here for decades to centuries. Out of sight-out of mind. I guess if you don't see it in your back yard, it is no worse here, than it is in a land fill. What do you think about plastic bags? Use comments.

Speaking of weird, as I was paddling up into a shallow area, a curious object in the water caught my eye. It looked like a dead swollen fish with a body about as big around as a 2-liter bottle, but it had a white body and an orangish red head. Thinking it was a toy, I started paddling right up to it. We almost scared the fluids out of each other. Should have had the camera out but it just didn't look real with the wild colors. Heads up fishermen, there be a big Koi (ornamental carp) in these waters. Click here for an image of a Koi. They vary in colors.

5) Unknown species of Privet.

6) Sometimes it pays to paddle in residential canals where flower gardens accentuate waterway beauty.

7) After passing under a limb, something moved. "What was that?" I asked and went back and got a photo of some insects that did not like the sun.

8) Saw some interesting flowers that float on the watercalled Floating Bladderworts (Utricularia inflata).

9) Despite a recent rain, water was pretty clear.

10) Nice clear water.

11) The further you paddle up, the more you have to learn to crouch down to get under limbs. Watch for snakes and wasp nests before doing so.

12) If you ever paddle up Halls Mill Creek, be sure to stop at Hippie Beach - the local hangout, but don't do it barefooted.

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?

05/03/2010 - Dog River (Blog Post Number 300)

Launch: Hoppe's off Dauphin Island Parkway in Mobile, AL
Destination: Shore of Dog River, east side.

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1) You're not going to believe this, but shortly after starting this trip there was "aroma da petroleum" scent in the air and a funny color to the water. There in Dog River was a petroleum sheen north and south of the Alba Club and Marina. Members at the Alba Club said it had been reported and believe it came from up river. I called it in to the Coast Guard anyway. Called 411. Asked for Coast Guard, Brookley. It had indeed already been reported. 

2) If this petroleum slick was seen around an oil refinery, the authorities would be all over the place, helicopters would be flying overhead, new crews would be taking video with cameras, and there would be a segment on the news about it. Sorry, just another spill probably coming from an abandoned boat reported to you by a kayaker. No deep pockets here to justify any clean up effort or consequence to the polluter. Welcome to Alabama the Beautiful - hold your nose when kayaking and pray that the water skiers will disperse the crude.

3) The snails were all out of the water. Could it have been petroleum?

4) There are many little canals off Dog River that are nice to paddle in that they have a natural feel to them - it is like being in the wild instead of a residential canal.

5) There are some nice homes to see along the river.

 6) Rather than remove this abandoned boat (plants growing in it) while it is easy, the authorities will let it sink. In 500 years, all our waterways will be full of abandoned and sunk boats. How sad is that? I damaged my kayak yesterday on a submerged sheet of rusty metal from an old sunk boat.

7) Wild coral honeysuckle is always a pleasure to see, also known as trumpet honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens). The name Lonicera comes from a German botanist and sempervirens means evergreen.

8) Saw quite a few birds today including some herons.

9) A yellow crowned night-heron. Also saw a couple black crowned night-herons.

10) It is interesting to see the mutual trust between turtles and wood ducks. They both seem to have excellent eye sight because when a kayak gets near, they vamoose.

11) Alas, the trip comes to an end as the sun sets in the west.

12) Sunset on Dog River.

Side note: For those of you who do read the text under these photos, I have removed all the Cold Water links. Water temps are up near 75 degrees now. You can relax more knowing that hypothermia and gasp reflex will not be so critical to survival now if you fall in.

05/02/2010 - Bayou La Batre Blessing of the Fleet

Launch: Bayou La Batre Public Launch
Destination: Bayou La Batre Blessing of the Fleet

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1) Bayou La Batre is trashy as ever. A shoreline like this is not good for eco tourism in Alabama in what could be a very enticing location for visiting kayakers.

2) Bayou La Batre is also an appliance dump.

3) A kayaker does not have to look very hard to find petroleum sheens on the water along with their noxious fumes in Bayou La Batre. 

4) Tons of people have been activated to monitor and address the BP oil spill, but they seem blind to the petroleum that already coats the local water surface of Bayou La Batre.

5) Breathing the air around this minor spill was terrible. I can only imagine what the air will be like when the BP oil starts coating the shorelines.

6) I reported one of the sheens (there were several in different locations) to the Marine Police who were at the Blessing of the Fleet. I applaud the Marine Police for responding and actually checking out the spill. One officer said it was diesel fuel and that the EPA won't respond to spills of this nature. The EPA's current method of dealing with these sheens is to let it evaporate or let the sun burn it off. They also went over to the shrimp boat where the sheen seem to be coming from and talked to the crew. Kudos to the Alabama Marine Police. BP gets severely sued for their accidental release of petroleum while shrimp boats go around releasing petroleum with without any consequence. It boggles the mind...

7) Anyway, I wanted to see the decorated boats of the Blessing of the Fleet today as well as check out the situation concerning the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Many airboats and environmental response boats are on standby along with a news vehicle.

8) A barge was headed out into Portersville Bay with a load of oil booms. No booms were visible from the mouth of Bayou La Batre.

9) Water levels were quite high almost flooding Shell Beach road.

10) This year Alabama Cruises had a tour boat running up and down Bayou La Batre during the Festival event.

11) I was not the only kayaker out today.

12) These were some of the decorated boats that were going to participate in the boat parade.

13) This graphic on this shrimp boat was confusing. Piss on the shrimp? How distasteful. Well, shrimp does have about 5 times the cholesterol compared to steak, so, maybe it is best to avoid eating shrimp.

14) I uploaded this photo showing a cooler boat graphic on porpoise.