KAYAKING AT THE NWR.
Day 211 – Beginning of Week 31. Got up this morning to a sunny day, 30 degrees. It just may warm up enough for us to go kayaking. Tomorrow we leave Tennessee, starting our journey north to get the work done on the RV. We’ll be going back to Wappapello State Park and Mingo National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Missouri. We were only there for a short visit about a month ago when we stopped there on our way to the St. Louis area. We decided to take a few spare days and go back again on our way north.
We left the campground around 2:30 p.m. when the temperature reached 58 degrees. Still wonderfully sunny with low wind – a perfect afternoon for kayaking in the bayou at the Wildlife Refuge. We drove to the Long Point Unit of Reelfoot NWR, about 15 minutes from where we were camping. The northern boundary sits on the borders of KY & TN. We last checked out the boat launch site on Friday; that’s where we saw the muskrat. We hoped to see more. We had a great time paddling amongst the lilly pads & bald cypress trees, taking narrow passageways through the swamp and marshlands. The only other people we saw were a couple of guys in a jon boat fishing – they were chatting about how old they were – one guy was 79 and the other was 83. There’s hope for us all. At one point we passed by a very noisy area where all kinds of rustling and animal noises were coming from a group of tall reeds in the marsh. We had no idea what kind of critter we were listening to. We paddled behind groups of Coots who complained that we were in their space. We looked out over the marsh and could see the heads of ducks moving through the marshlands, just heads, because their bodies were hidden. We came upon an area where the fish were jumping – BIG fish, right out of the water by our kayaks. Scared us half to death a couple of times until we came to expect it. Two muskrats swam very close by. It looked like the male was chasing the female. We could hear them chattering. It’s that time of year.
Click any picture below to see a slideshow.
When we got back to the campground around 6:15 p.m., we had campers parked in the space closest to us – a fifth-wheel trailer, a truck, an SUV and a fishing boat. So we’re leaving at just the right time. Having the whole campground to ourselves was really nice.