Red Lake and Indian River May 2013

Last weekend we were able to get in a paddle at Red Lake.  It is a small lake with an outlet to the Indian River.  Red Lake is north of the little town of Theresa, NY in Jefferson County (west of the Adirondack Park.)

As you can see, it was a pretty day for a paddle.  Brody is keeping an eye on that red kayak ahead of us!  He doesn't want his daddy to get too far away.

The road to Red Lake leads to a parking area and a boat launch.  It is a gradual grade and is used by both car top carrier boats as well as motor boats.  There is a swampy area to the right of the put-in which means lots of mosquitoes this time of year.  There were enough of them that we worked double-time to get the kayaks off the car, gear stowed (oh, and bug spray applied, incuding Skin-So-Soft all over Brody) and the kayaks in the water. 

Once on the water, there was a slight breeze most of the time.  When it died down, the bugs hovered, but luckily the soft breeze picked back up within a few minutes.

Cliffs march along the eastern shore of Red Lake for most of its length.  There are a few houses and camps above the cliffs, but none in the area where I took this photo.

This photo of my husband will give you a better idea of the cliffs.  They rise quite high on the right, and although it looks like there is a break in the cliffs before you see the rocks on the left, the cliff does continue on behind the trees close to the water.  I would say they are about 50-60 feet high in most areas.

Here is a view of the lake looking toward its northern end where there are no cliffs.  We did not explore that area on this trip, but we did on a paddle we took in 2008.

 In 2008, we paddled Red Lake in October.  This is the northwestern part of the lake:

Again, looking north, Brody is checking things out.  There were a number of fisherman on the lake on this day.  All of the boats were smaller fishing ones, so we weren't disturbed much by their noise.

Here is a close up of some of the rocky banks of Red Lake.

We at our lunch drifting in the middle of the lake to avoid the worst of the flying insects.  We shared our wraps with Brody-- he was very appreciative and I got lots of kisses on the nose in thanks!

Along the cliffs in the fall, we saw a brilliantly colored tree (probably a sugar maple-- not positive though.)  It looked as if the tree was painted onto the cliff.

After lunch, we decided to head along the outlet which leads to Indian River so that we could paddle for a while on the river.  Here is the outlet which is on the western side of the lake, just north of the put-in which is a bit to the left of this photo.

Although we didn't see many birds other than red winged black birds, we heard tons of them. I wish I was able to identify them all by their songs.  This must be an area where the birds stop to rest before flying over the St. Lawrence River (less than an hour from this area as the crow flies) because as we were driving down the road to the lake, we met a group of bird watchers, all sporting binoculars, and being led by a (presumably) knowledgeable guide.

Brody has his ears up and turned as he tries to figure out where the bird song is coming from.

Another shot of the outlet as we head to the Indian River:

Once on the river, we saw a few more birds such as a great blue heron, and the bird that Brody has noticed:

A turkey vulture.  He was eating something along the bank of the river.  As we approached, he flew to a nearby tree and waited for us to go before flying back down to finish his meal.  Turkey vultures are pretty big birds with a wingspan around 6 feet, yet they can weigh as little as 4 or 5 pounds. 

Here is a pretty shot of the river-- there was a current, but it was barely noticeable.

 
Here is what the river looked like in October 2008:
 

And that year, we spotted a green heron on some dead wood just as we entered the outlet, on our way back to the lake:

 

 I was able to get quite a few photos of the heron.  He moved with stealth as he hunted either fish or frogs in the water.  We enjoyed watching him make his way across these branches.

Although there are motor boats on Red Lake, we found the fishermen polite and very willing to slow down to lessen their wakes as they passed us.  Many were very impressed with Brody as well!

I would have had more photos to share, but for the first time on a kayaking trip, I left the memory card out of the camera!  Despite changing the photo size to allow more photos, I still wasn't able to get that many.  I blame the problem on the fact that the computer I now have, a reburbished one with lots of memory, has a slot for the SD card rather than using a card reader-- very convenient-- but easy to leave the card in the computer!


I will leave you with this photo of Brody and the outlet.  He has a little bit of a sad expression on his face because I was calling him a "little turd."  He did not want to turn around and show me his face! He finally complied!

I hope you have all been able to get out and paddle over this holiday weekend.  Unfortunately it has been very cold and rainy here in northern New York.  We broke 50 late this afternoon and it's looking up for tomorrow.  So, wish us luck-- we may just get a paddle in before the work week begins.

Happy Kayaking!

West Branch of the Fish Creek & Gifford Lake, part two

Continuing with my description of our paddle up Fish Creek:

As we paddled upstream, we saw Canada geese just past an area where people were fishing.  Here is a photo of them.

And here is another shot of the creek as we paddled further upstream:

 The creek has many twists and turns.  It allowed us to see some Red winged blackbirds before they flew off.
Here is the only one I managed to photograph that day:

We stopped talking and paddled quietly as we rounded a curve in the creek, hoping a great blue heron or some other water bird might be waiting.  Nope.  But at the next turn in the creek, I was ahead and spotted something orange with it's head bent, looking in the grass.  A red fox! By the time I signaled my husband, the fox had picked up his head and decided there wasn't enough room for all of us on the creek.  It was too late for a photo.  The whole encounter took less than 5 seconds.  But that was definitely the highlight of our first kayaking trip of 2010!  We've seen many red fox as they hurry across the road in the evening, but this is the first time we've seen one while paddling.

There is a channel off the creek which leads to a very small lake, Gifford Lake.  The entrance to the channel is marked by a fishing camp on the right as you paddle upstream.  There is one house on Gifford Lake, and the highway is behind it.  For these reasons, we chose to turn around instead of paddling the lake.  Here is Gifford Lake:

After reversing direction and heading back to the creek, I consulted my guide book for the way upstream.  We headed along the channel and turned right, continuing upstream, but there wasn't much current to guide our way.  When we reached what seemed like an impassable area, we poked around, looking for a way upstream.  I am able to float in very little water in my kayak, but the closer I got to the overgrowth-- last year's dried reeds and cattails-- the more the water smelled stagnant, and the bottom looked full of silt, which isn't much better than mud when it comes to paddling a kayak!  So, I advised my husband, who sits lower in the water in his kayak, to turn around before he got stuck.  I was able to back out of the area, but was disappointed since this meant the end to our upstream paddle, and we had expected to go for at least a few more miles.   While on the water, we were concerned that we somehow missed the channel, but now that I've thought about it, I don't think so.  The West Branch of Fish Creek had water going over the dam where we put in, but I think the low level of the creek upstream is an indication of what is, so far, a dry spring.  We did not get nearly the amount of snow we usually do in Northern NY, and this creek looks like it's feeling the effects.  I did not check the water levels of area waterways before we went on this paddle, but I have now.
There is website with water level info on some rivers, lakes and streams in NY.  It is part of the US Geological Survey site and is called WaterWatch.  This is the link: http://waterwatch.usgs.gov/?m=real&r=ny

We headed slowly back downstream and saw a number of turtles sunning themselves.  They are very creative when there's no log or rock to get out on for a soak in the sun.  We found them "dry docked" on the dead, brittle reeds and cattails, such as the ones in this photo:

We saw more Canada geese in a side channel as we headed back.  They made a racket when we paddled in their general direction.  Who knew 2 geese could honk so loud?  We decided they might have already been tending eggs, so we turned around with the noise of their warning in our ears.

Back at the bridge, our exit from the creek went better than expected.  We were a bit disappointed in the length of the trip, but it was such a beautiful day, we were happy to have had the chance to paddle, no matter that it was only a few hours.

We're looking forward to the coming weekend and hoping the forecast of rain won't be for the entire time.  For now, I'll leave you with a photo that is more typical of our kayaking trips in terms of greenery.  This is the Raquette River: