On this Tuesday we had a choice of a bike ride or a paddle. Our group choose to paddle. We had 13 altogether. There was Margaret, Dottie, Diane, Jane and John, Bill, Brian and his son Kevin, Jack, Mark, Buck, John F and Bruce. Eight of us met at the Hardee’s on Portsmouth Blvd. around 8:00 A.M. for conversation and a biscuit or two. Leaving Hardee’s we all drove the 2 miles to the put-in at Portsmouth City Park. The tide was high and we had enough water to put our boats in without walking in mud like the last time we paddled here. Everyone was in the water by 9:20 and we were on our way. Passing a large boat checking crab pots for the day's catch, we paddled towards the Churchland Bridge on the west side of the river. There were 2 creeks on this side that I wanted to paddle which we had missed on the last trip. Here we saw ducks, heron and a couple of Kingfishers, as we paddled to the end of the two creeks. Heading towards the West Norfolk Bridge, Hwy. 164, we passed a large boat marina with 50 or 60 large pleasure boats. From here we paddled back across the river and under the bridge to a small beach where we had a short break for water and to stretch our legs.
As we paddled back under the bridge heading towards the Elizabeth River, we passed the large cranes at the Portsmouth Terminal. We saw 4 sections of the new tunnel submerged in the water. On this day there was a lot going on in the river. Two ships were coming in from the bay, a large dredge was out in the middle of the river digging a place for the tunnel, and a few pleasure boats were coming by. Luckily, we were only here for a short time and then we turned off the main river and then up into a small creek toward the Dock of the Bay Restaurant. This was our goal for this trip and after everyone was able to climb up and out of their kayaks onto the floating dock, we all had a great meal.
After lunch, it was a little harder to climb back into our boats from the floating dock which was sitting on the ground after the tide had gone out. Everyone made it back in and we had a good paddle back to the put-in where Margaret and I had cold watermelon waiting for all. Check out Bill’s pictures, he should, as always have some good ones.
Bruce