Where are the PUT INS on Rivers in Kentucky? A turn around on the Kentucky River.

Where are the PUT INS on Kentucky Rivers?

A Turn Around on the Kentucky River

Kentucky is crisscrossed with miles and miles of rivers but canoeing on them can sometimes feel like you are solving a puzzle.  Where can you put in?  Where can you take out?  What is the security at each spot like?  Is the access close to the river?  Even after you think you have done enough research to spend some time on the river, even when you think you have identified the take out spot in a book, we find that the available literature and the river reality are quite different things.

Armed with the Kentucky Atlas (Topo maps of the entire state), a booklet called "Kentucky's Boating and Fishing access sites" put out by the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, and the book "A Canoeing and Kayaking Guide to Kentucky"  by Bob Sehlinger and Johnny Molloy we thought we had all that we needed to know!

We wanted to canoe in pool 2 from Big Twin Creek bridge on Hwy 355 to General Butler State Park.  It took us a few turn arounds to find the put in on Twin Eagle Creek Bridge on Hwy 355.  It was hidden by overgrown brush and not real near the bridge itself.  Headed north on Hwy 355, it is on the left side of the road after the bridge over the creek.  There is paved put in with a small parking lot.  Parking and river access are good.

We then traveled to General Butler State Park to leave a car at the take out.  The "Canoeing and Kayaking Guide to Kentucky" has only a vague arrow pointing to a takeout place off of Hwy 227.  Kentucky's Boating and Fishing Access Sites listed General Butler State Park take out with directions saying "KY 227 to park".  When we asked several General Butler staff about where the access to the Kentucky River was located in the park, they had NO IDEA.  They had no idea that the park's boundaries even included the Kentucky River.  They could tell us about the Ohio River, but not the Kentucky River!  After searching for 1/2 hour, we decided to forget trying to find a takeout spot. We had small children in our group and it was getting late and so it would be difficult to canoe the 8 miles before dark. This experience doesn't say much for the staff or literature telling us about the natural resources in our own state.

We drove back to Big Twin Creek, where the rest of our canoeing group was waiting.  This access requires canoeing several hundred feet on the creek before reaching the Kentucky River. We chose to paddle upstream 2 miles and then float back to the put in.  That was our big turnaround. We were introducing our grandsons to the adventure of canoeing, but also introducing their parents to the realities of getting on a river in Kentucky. 

The Kentucky River in pool 2 is a wide slow river, with wooded banks of sycamore and silver maple, sometimes called water maple.  The banks were muddy and were sloping to steep.  Behind the banks were fields.  Even so, the deer were plentiful.  In that short 2 mile stretch we saw 7 deer, including 3 fawn. 

The water and life within the water was less encouraging.  It was muddy (generally expected since we are in the rainy season), but we couldn’t even begin to deal with the islands of floating trash.  We usually pick up the occasional piece of floating trash to help clean our rivers.  It is a good reminder that anything littered in the Kentucky River Basin will build into mounds of trash as the litter travels along the flowing waters.  Picking up the trash was a good way to introduce our grandsons to why it is important to clean up the river. This river did not give us a pleasant view.  We saw some alligator gar along the way but we saw no turtles and very few birds.  Makes us wonder.  We have been working to canoe as much of the Kentucky River that we can but this trip, compared to our other trips, left a lot to be desired.

Even so, it was good to be on the river and to enjoy the float.

Congaree National Park! A Swamp to Canoe Through.

Congaree National Park!

A Swamp to Canoe Through

South Carolina is not where you might expect to canoe through a Swamp!  Congaree National Park’s forest is one of the few “old growth” floodplain forests left.  Being from Florida we have spent plenty of time in low swampy waterways and we were looking forward to seeing what the Congaree in South Carolina had to offer.   We took the opportunity to go in March during our daughter's spring break even though we would only have a few days at the park and in the swamp.  The canoeing was good for both couples and we were not disappointed!

The Visitor Center opens at 9:00, but we wanted to get an early start on the river – so a great idea was to register for the backcountry permit the day before.  They have maps of the park and behind the counter they have a waterproof map of the “Congaree River Blue Trail”.  Actually these maps did not help us very much!  They did not have enough detail for us to ascertain where we were.  The recognizable landmarks were the bluffs at the Heritage Park, the railroad bridge, and the one large sandbar only a mile from the take out.  

We were surprised when the Park staff told us that there would be up to 10 portages that we would do on the 8 mile portion of Cedar Creek before getting to the Congaree River.  (The creek from Bannister Bridge to Cedar Creek landing was reported to have 30 portages! Glad we hadn't chosen that one!) Why so many portages?  Downed trees that haven’t been cleared away are the biggest obstacles in the creek.  We were glad that some of the “portages” could be passed under or around and we ended up portaging just 4 times.  Not too bad.  Our next challenge was staying within the Creek.  The creek meanders through the swamp often over the banks making it very difficult to be sure of which direction to turn.  There are some small trail markers attached to trees in the creek here and there and when we saw one we were reassured that we were going the right way. But there were a few times when we had to double track a short distance back. Another time we found ourselves canoeing against the flow of the water.  This does cause one to stop and ponder whether you are on the right track or not. We were glad the water level was where it was (about 3.5 feet according to the gauge) as we were sure to have gotten lost if more of the creek was out of its banks. 

How to Go Around, Under, or Over the Downed Trees!

We started on a Friday morning in mid-March with a temperature of 29 degrees.  At the visitor center,  the famous "mosquito meter”  read “mild”.  It had a rating of 2 on a scale of 6.  Weren't we lucky?   The cold air was keeping the mosquitoes at bay.

We loved the vegetation – the Bald Cypress and their knobby knees, Tupelo with their fluted trunk bottoms (as one little girl told us, the trees look like they are wearing skirts), dangling Spanish moss, resurrection fern, dwarf palmetto, American Beech!  

We loved the knobby knees of the Bald Cypress!

Can you feel the cold, quiet morning?

I love the reflection in the dark water.

The dark tannic water of the cypress swamp, we examine close up, as we meander slowly around the creek’s many bends.  The life of the swamp was heard in the call and pecking of the pileated woodpecker, and the consistent hooting of the barred owl.  An otter was also trying to hide from us as it swam smoothly in and around cypress tree and tupelo trunks.  We kept our eyes “out” for any other wildlife we might see, particularly looking for any alligators.  We are told they are here but it was probably still too cold for them to be out.  A couple of times we did see small groups of the feral pigs that have inundated the Park.  They would immediately scurry away when they saw we were nearby.  This probably adds to the difficulty of removing them from the Park.

Our daughter enjoying Cedar Creek

As we paddled closer to the Congaree River, plastic bottles were everywhere!  It was just too numerous.  It was hard for us to think that those who enjoy being outside would throw their trash into the river.  We came across one dead, cormorant skeleton  hanging in a tree wings spread – having been caught by a  hook left on a line to catch fish without the person present.

Any experienced canoer would cringe to think that they would only canoe 8 miles in 6 hours!  With the backtracking, portages, and slow life of the swamp – that is exactly how long it took us.  We were told that we would reach Congaree River using Mazyck’s Cut, but nothing is marked, so worries start clouding your mind and you think you are on the unmaintained part of the creek beyond Mazyck’s Cut.  If we were we would not be able to know.  But we finally did reach the wide Congaree River.  Yeah!  This part of the Congaree River is part of the community’s Blue Trail.  The river was actually flowing at a good clip and we were ready to find a good sand bar (of which we were told there were many) to camp.  After canoeing for over an hour, we realized that we were not going to find a sandbar – they were all mud.  So we found some higher ground and camped near a field of butterweed on the National Park side of the river.  Open fires are not allowed in the park.   Since the temperature had risen, the mosquitoes did find us that evening as the sun set.  We also woke to find that the river had risen a foot and there was water in a gut very near the tent.  We think that engineers are constantly managing the water level on the Congaree River.

Our campsite among the Butterweed.

We packed up our supplies, took photos of the butterweed, and recommenced our trip down the Congaree River.  With the quick flow of the river we estimated that we did over 3 miles an hour.  The temperature rose to a glorious 70 sunny degrees in March.  We saw evidence of corrals and corn feeders, which we figured were used to cull the feral hogs that have overrun South Carolina and specifically the National Park. We took a picnic where Bate’s Ferry Trail reaches the Congaree.  Next to it is a small creek spanned by a dismantled wooden bridge.  There was an open spaced grassy area that we used for our picnic. Unfortunately people have used the nearby area too often for their toilet, littering it with toilet paper.  As we picnicked there, we saw the only sandbar just across the river, occupied by 3 different families.  We were only a mile from the take out. The take out spot has 2 ramps, a dock, and was a busy place on a Saturday morning.  The last day we did 9 miles of the Congaree River in 2 ½ hours.  

Early Spring proved to be the perfect time of year to spend some time paddling in Congaree National Park.  We had some good wildlife viewing, had minimal mosquitoes, were challenged by some good paddling punctuated with portages around downed trees, and enjoyed our time going through the SWAMP!  You ready for an adventure?