Lakeview Wildlife Management Area, Part Two

*Note:  Yes, this really IS the Quiet Kayaking in New York blog.  No, we did not kayak on the ocean-- it's Lake Ontario in the photos below.  Do not use your back button, you're on the right blog!

As I mentioned in Part One, this is one of our favorite kayaking locations.  The scenery is varied and so is the wildlife.  We also enjoy the sand bar and outlet of Lake Ontario.  It's a great place to pull out your kayak and take a stroll along the beach.  We usually have lunch here also.  Fair warning though-- on a nice summer day, weekend or not, the later you arrive, the more people you will encounter.

This is a photo of the outlet to Lake Ontario from the creek and ponds area.  The water in the foreground is a mix of creek and lake water.  The water in the background is Lake Ontario.  And the white dots are, of course, seagulls, the darker ones Canada geese.

With our kayaks pulled up onto the sand bar, we took a walk along the shoreline.  This is the pretty view looking south:

During the summer, people (who often arrive on this beach by motorboat) get quite industrious and build all kinds of interesting things out of the driftwood.  A walk further down the beach revealed this little shade hut.  There were other sculptures and places to sit along the way.

Brody enjoyed a couple of romps in the small waves to get cooled off.  The lake was unusually calm.  On a windier day, the waves can get high enough that I wouldn't want to take my recreational kayak out on them.  But an ocean kayak would work!

We did not swim, but we waded around to cool off.  Many people wear their swimsuits under their clothing and go swimming once they reach the lake.  In this spot, you can walk out at least 50 feet, maybe more.

After our lunch sitting on driftwood "benches," we headed back to our kayaks.  This is a photo of the creek as it spills into the ponds and the outlet to Lake Ontario.

The area near the outlet is fascinating in that the cold (usually, and relatively speaking, of course) Lake Ontario waters mix with the warmer waters of the creek and ponds.  Once in a while, this creates fog!  We'd never witnessed fog on a warm, sunny day.  This did not happen when we were there in July 2012, but DID happen on a previous kayaking paddle.  Here is a photo of my husband in the fog very near the area above (a little further away from the outlet and closer to the ponds.)  This was in June of 2007.  And no, there is nothing wrong with the photo nor has it been "photoshopped."  That really is fog rising off the water.  Very cool!

Here is Brody as we head north toward the ponds.  Once again, he has his eye on our group.  I think the girls were just getting into their kayaks and he had to make sure they were following.

Below, the girls are ahead of me and we're on one of the ponds in the Lakeview Wildlife Management Area. There are a number of channels running into and out of the ponds and surrounding area due to the 2 or 3 creeks which flow west toward Lake Ontario.

A clump of blossoming pickerel weed crowded an area near one of the pond's outlets.

Here is another view of the ponds area.  In the past, we've seen tons of carp here.  Once on a trip in June, we heard knocks on the bottoms of our kayaks while paddling a shallow pond. They were such hard knocks that we thought it must be turtles.  Well, as we kept searching for an answer in the water, we found it.  HUGE carp come to this area.  Not sure if they stay because we did not have the same encounters later in the summer.  But believe me when I say they are large fish!

There is no shortage of paddling in Lakeview Wildlife Management Area. From the entrance/put-in point on South Sandy Creek, you can paddling 3 different ponds, the channels between them, and up some of the creeks that spill into them.  At the northern part of LWMA is Floodwood Pond.  We did not paddle up that far, but you could definitely spend an entire day here paddling around, or spend most of the day, as we did and do some beach walking as well.

I planned to leave this section with another photo of Brody, but my internet connection is bogging down at the moment, so I will end here and pick up with that pic for the beginning of Part Three.

Think SPRING and maybe it will get here faster!