Kayaking - Holmes Creek

 10.9 miles, 2.7 avg speed, 7.4 max speed, 4:30 elapsed time,Temperature - high 70s, blue skies

Where do I even begin recounting today’s adventure. We dropped the bike off at Hightower and then put in at Cotton Landing. First I’ll tell you about the creek. It’s a winding twisty creek lined with trees, very little vegetation in the river. We did see fish in the river, but few birds and no alligators. There were lots of downed trees and branches in the creek and there were several islands in the middle of the creek making it hard to decide which way to go. As a result, there were several times where we had to backtrack and go downstream another way. We had to portage twice. The first time the Creek was blocked, but we were able to get on shore and carry our kayaks. The problem was we had to go through a holly bush and a sticker bush but we made it. The second portage was again when the river was blocked and there was a muddy path on the left which we thought we could get through. The problem was once we started stepping in the mud, we would sink. It was especially hard for me because I was wearing Scotty’s Keens which we had brought instead of mine and because the shies were big they kept getting stuck in the mud. We threw logs over the mud so that we wouldn’t sink down. You could hardly call them logs though as they disintegrated pretty much when we picked them up. We succeeded and got past this barrier also. It should be noted that BenjiBear liked these obstructions as he got to get out and run and dig in the mud. Maybe about 4 miles before the end, we pulled over at a newly constructed boat launch. There was a ramp there in a covered pavilion. It appears to be at the end of 2 Creek Rd. and if we do this creek again, We hope to stop here. Because after this stop is when we encountered most of our problems. It was definitely a challenging creek just like the last time.