Little Creek Reservoir trip, 4.26.2007

No pictures this time....

Okay, first of all we thought we were paddling the northern end of Lake Smith in Virginia Beach.  It wasn't until I looked at the map that I discovered this body of water is called Little Creek Reservoir.  Bordered by Shore Drive on the North and Northhampton Boulevard on the South this is a small body of water and we easily saw the bulk of it in just under two hours of leisurely paddling.  This was Maria's first trip of 2008 and she picked up right where she left off last year, very comfortable in her still very new kayak.

I took the opportunity to use my GPS unit on a paddling trip for the first time.  I will likely need quite a few trips under my belt before I figure out how to get maps in and out of the unit so I can post them on the website.  Here is the vital information about the paddle....

We traveled (round trip) 3.59 miles.  We were moving for 1 hour and 34 minutes and stopped for 12 minutes and 51 seconds.  Our (mine--since I had the GPS on my boat) fastest speed was 4.2 miles per hour with a moving average speed of 2.3 miles per hour and an overall average of 2.0 miles per hour.

We put in on the North side of Northhampton Boulevard at a nice ramp area (not paved) and were paddling in no time.  We paddled the area clockwise and skirted the shoreline.  It was a little windy but we hardly noticed it.  We saw lots of birds, Double Breasted Cormorants were plentiful and we have never noticed them before.  Lots of ducks and geese.  We saw a lot of geese sitting on their nests which was a first.  We also saw a couple of duck families with babies.

The Western shoreline of the reservoir borders a neighborhood off of Diamond Springs Road and we saw lots of houses.  Once we made it to the Northwest corner of the shore we followed a small area that was parallel to Shore Drive and went behind the Waterford and Harbor Inn apartment complexes.  We used to live in Harbor Inn and were familiar with the small finger of water that goes behind it.  We paddled all the way to where it meets Diamond Springs Road.  On the way back out Maria encountered what looked to be a small water moccassin.  She swiftly paddled away and was not too happy about the encounter, though it was benign enough.

After that we took a course straight across the reservoir to the Eastern shore and started paddling South.  There were not many houses along this shoreline but the ones that were there were very nice and one was absolutely mammoth.  We called it The Compound because it looked like it spread along the whole backside of it's small cove of water.

We arrived back at the boat ramp none the worse for wear.  We loaded up and headed home. Another short, but enjoyable paddle done.