Kayak Virginia Beach

Running The Border - Smiths Creek - Northwest River

I have not been to Smiths Creek since May, and I have no reason why I have not. The water levels were up at the launch site, and a couple of trees have fallen to the left, so that option is gone for a while. The water surface was pretty scummy, with some kind of reddish almost oil looking stuff on it, but it was not oil. This area is almost always a nice relaxing trip any time of year, and today was no difference, just nice calm waters and beautiful forest, with a view that changes at every turn.

Today was also the annual NAS Oceania Air show, and this area is used for the staging area for the planes, so I gat the added bonus of a mini air show watching the Navy planes group up for their fly-bys.

I took a left at the Northwest river, as I had planned, with my destination a creek that parallels the VA/NC border. There wasn't much traffic on the river, except for the occasional fisherman, making it a real pleasant paddle down.

The mouth of the creek is right at the border, it is easy to spot, just look for the dashed line in the river and make a left :-). The creek pretty much straddles the border, to the left is forrest and Virginia, and to the right is grassy marsh and North Carolina. After the first quarter mile or so, you start losing the sounds of the power boats on the river, and the sounds of this wooded marsh start taking over, which is my favorite part of any trip. The creek branches in to 2 decent sized branches, a little over a mile from the river. I took the right (larger) branch, I was planning on doing both, but for some reason my head was not into is, and I decided to save it for another trip. I think this would be a great spring, early summer trip.

The trip back with the exception of the big moron pulling the little moron on the inner-tube behind the ski-boat was pretty uneventful, I guess they were trying to see just how much of the river they could use.

A bit of a warning, about a hundred yards from the launch, just before the first, there is a large Hornets nest on the North or right side of the creek, it is about 8 feet off the water.