Someone had a simple idea.
Someone (Sugar) thought maybe we should get kayaks and learn how to kayak.
Sounds like a good plan, only we know nothing about the art of kayaking. So I messaged a friend who might possibly know something, because I had seen a photo on social media of her in a kayak.
I messaged her to ask if she knew where we could look to buy kayaks besides WalMart.
Oh, she knew. She knew A LOT.
She invited us to join her and her husband to go out in their kayaks at their river house. She knew when the tide would be right, and what kind of kayak we should use, and which landing we could put in, and what we should wear.
So apparently this kayaking deal involves more than meets the eye.
Sugar the Map Guy decided to take a look at different points of the river where we might put in.
Which means a day trip.
At Salzburg Landing, there’s a lazy section of river with a boat ramp. Off to the side, there’s a trail alongside the river. A tree along the embankment had toppled over years ago but continued to grow.
On the other side were marsh grasses, and the leftover marsh reeds from last year’s Hurricane Matthew formed a line at the highest point of the tide.
We’re facing south, and you can see some of the erosion from the ages.
A big oak still clings to the top of the embankment. It’s a little past midday, and it is HOT OUT HERE.
Now we’re at a section that might be called a Boneyard. There’s a beach on Edisto called Boneyard Beach, but it is much larger than this little mini-Boneyard.
On the way back to the van, we catch this perfect moment.
Another view of the trail back and the line of dead dry reeds to our left at the base of the embankment. The smaller line of reeds to our right is most probably from an ordinary high tide.
The plan is to find out how far it is from Salzburg to the abandoned railroad trestle near Knowles Island. We found out that you can’t get there on a kayak unless you get out at the end of Boyd’s Creek and carry your kayak overland to get to the Broad River.
I had read that a fishing pier had been built at the site of the old trestle, and that it was wheelchair friendly, and even though I am not wheelchair-dependent and I don’t fish, I had been wanting to check that out…
So it’s not like we can just fling a kayak into the water and paddle off as if you were on a lake or other still body of water.
These are salt-water bodies of water that are dependent on the tide. Let’s imagine that you are a beginner (waves hand wildly in the air) and you put in at high tide as it turns, and get swept out to sea.
It’s really getting hot out here on this metal pier, and we turn for home.
Do we go out in little boats with friends? That is a story for another day.
(We do!)
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