Recreation, Rivers & Shores

Lake Chelan National Recreation Area

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The Stehekin River in Washington state naturally formed a lake before emptying into the Columbia River, but a small dam was added to raise the water level. To get to the park, you have to take the 1.5 hour ferry ride from the resort town of Chelan (shuh-LAN, rhymes with man), which can be done as a day trip with layovers from 1.5 to 6 hours, or else you have to hike in on the Pacific Crest Trail or some other route, likely overnight through Grizzly territory. The ferry is the best way to get a look at the whole, long lake, including a large stretch of fire damage. I recommend bicycling, but the ferry company doesn’t allow bicycles on some boats, perhaps to aid their bicycle rental business at the arrival dock. Wenatchee Washington is a 45 minute drive south of Chelan, but its hotels are half the price.

Along with Lake Ross, this park is part of the North Cascades Complex, three distinct contiguous park units established simultaneously, so technically I visited all three by EV when I stopped at the main visitor center. The remote village of Stehekin is worth spending some time exploring, as they have a museum, a lodge with restaurant, a couple gift shops, a traditional apple orchard with free-pick-your-own in the fall, and an excellent bakery. Lodging, campgrounds and seats on the ferry do fill up, so reservations are wise. There are also very scenic hikes along the glacial river and above the glacial lake. Due to lack of easy access, the park has a relaxed old-timey feel to it, where folks wave as they pass on the road and people seem to slow down to enjoy themselves. But don’t miss your return ferry, which leaves promptly.

Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area

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A couleé is an old French Canadian word meaning a flow, such as a spring creek that carves out a gully. Roughly 15,000 years ago the giant glacial Missoula Lake melted, ice dams broke and the floods carved a giant gorge here. The Columbia River used to roll on through the grand couleé until the giant dam was built, providing power and irrigation to an extensive area. FDR approved the project, so the man made lake that stretches all the way back into Canada is named after him. The dam has a museum showing old propaganda films about how wonderful dams are. The 12 bands of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation couldn’t stop the dam, but now they own the lake and co-manage it with the park service. They also hold ceremonies to ask for the return of the salmon.

Fort Spokane—rhymes with ‘man’—has an old school built to force Native American children to be like white kids, and it still hosts Buffalo soldier descendant reunions. The fort is also part of the Nez Perce story, as Chief Joseph and refugees were forced to winter here, receiving some emergency supplies from a trading post named Fort Colville after the governor of the Hudson Bay Company, and some Nez Perce are still here. Many Chinese settled here when there were mining camps, but then they were excluded from immigrating by law, driven out of many northwest communities and massacred in at least a few cases.

There’s a scenic drive up the northeast coast of the lake, past farms, a ferry and a few boat launches. The town of Colville is mostly underwater now, but the mission remains on park grounds. I hiked a few miles looking for the remains of the original townsite of Kettle Falls that was moved to accommodate the lake. There was some fire damage and fireweed blooming, and there’s a large plywood operation nearby. I found the wetlands above between the park service campgrounds and a day use area. There were many geese around here, a few hikers, and I disturbed a large white-tail deer on the trail. It was hot in July, but cooler in Washington state than most of the country.

Ozark National Scenic Riverways

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Nature requires pristine conditions to sustain diverse species, and here they exist undiminished. Cave Spring above is fed from Devils Well, a huge underground lake in a Karst cavern 100’ below the surface. The water is so clean and cold that bright green watercress grows in thick clumps underwater. I saw baby swallows above the cave mouth, baby ducks following their mother down the rapids, a river otter, great blue heron and bald eagles. The air was thick with mayflies over the water and butterflies on the wildflowers. Lovely.

Carr’s, aka Current River, offered to provide their equipment for the same price as a shuttle, so I paddled from Akers Ferry to my campground at Pulltite. There’s tubing downstream, but when the water is high enough, upstream is more scenic. There’s an excellent cave tour at Round Spring where I saw cave salamanders, but tickets are limited. The other river in the park is the Jack’s Fork, and there’s a scenic mill at Alley Spring where I saw baby skunks. The largest spring is unimaginatively called Big Spring, and it’s strikingly beautiful with hundreds of millions of gallons of aquamarine water pouring out of the rock daily. Blue Spring is one of the deepest in the world, but I didn’t have time to explore everywhere. This Missouri park is my favorite for kayaking, so I’m planning on returning to paddle another stretch soon.

Big South Fork National River & Recreation Area

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The Big South Fork is a 76 mile tributary from the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee that joins the Cumberland River between Cumberland Falls and Lake Cumberland in Kentucky. The Falls are the second largest east of the Rockies and are the best place to see a moonbow on this side of the planet. Unfortunately, Kentucky has a littering problem, so Cumberland Falls State Park is also a place you will see trash in and along the river.

The Big South Fork looked better when I kayaked from Blue Heron to Yamacraw above (Sheltowee Trace Adventure Resort has a shuttle). Non-native insects killed many pine trees years ago, so the forest has more hardwoods now. Pollution upstream still degrades the water, but Appalachia is recovering from the damage done by coal mining. Blue Heron campground made a good base to charge my car and explore the old mine exhibit there, even though the tourist rail line to town is under repair.

The gorges and remote roads make it difficult to get around, so I recommend paddling if there’s enough water. I saw a young deer and a bald eagle on the river and enjoyed looking up at the cliffs. The hiking is excellent too, and my favorite was hiking under the huge rock shelter behind 113’ Yahoo Falls. There’s also a large natural bridge called Twin Arches. The area is thick with trees, which makes it difficult to see all the geological features of the gorges, but the lush dense foliage gives the river a primordial feel, especially since I saw not a single person while kayaking.

Cape Hatteras National Seashore

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There are three main outer banks—‘OBX’—islands in the park: Bodie, Hatteras and Ocracoke, from north to south. Each has a lighthouse: Bodie is currently open for climbing, Hatteras is tallest and Ocracoke is oldest. I brought my kayak and stayed at Oregon Inlet campground across from the Bodie harbor which has a kayak launch, but there was some construction, commercial traffic, and strong, cold winds in May. Also, since the islands are so long and thin, it’s easiest to see the main sights by driving the 70 miles, including the free vehicle ferry to Ocracoke.

Hatteras island is the biggest, with several year round towns and thousands of residents outside summer, when hundreds of thousands visit the OBX. The road gets damaged in storms, and wind often blows huge drifts of sand onto the road. Many of the residents have anti-Biden signs, which is counter intuitive, since he is trying to defend them from the Climate Crisis, which will steal their land, take over their businesses and even invade their homes. But they ignore the science, the melting glaciers and ice caps, the strengthening storms, the sea level rise and the increasing erosion. The lighthouse has already been moved many times. The OBX is one of the fastest growing real estate markets on the NC coast, worth tens of billions of dollars, even as homes are falling into the sea. Money appears inversely related to intelligence.

The delightful nature walk above is Springer’s Point Trail at the southern tip of Ocracoke nearer Cape Lookout, the northern tip of which can be visited by passenger ferry leaving from Ocracoke’s picturesque Silver Lake Harbor. There are some ‘banker’ (OBX) horses on Ocracoke, but they’re penned, not really wild.

Gauley River National Recreation Area

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Upstream is the large Summersville Lake, which is drained each fall, creating a spectacular world class 25 mile whitewater kayak run for a few weekends through these woods and around the Pillow Rock Rapids bend above. The rest of the year, the West Virginia park belongs to the wildlife, without any significant visitor facilities and few easy access points. Information on hiking trails is available at New River Gorge nearby.

Obviously the whitewater is above my skills even if I waited until September, so I just decided to admire the views and hike in the beautiful woods. The best place for that is not the park campground—which is just a parking lot and kayak launch at the base of the Summersville Dam.

The place to go is the Carnifex Ferry Battlefield State Park—which commemorates the Civil War Union victory that helped drive the Confederacy out of western Virginia eventually leading to the creation of West Virginia. This is where I took the photo above, and where I walked into the park on the old ferry ‘road’ or trail. The state park is day use only, but it has nice facilities, beautiful lawns and a monument.

Buffalo National River

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[Sorry to hop around so much, but I want to wrap up a region]. Last year folks celebrated the 50th anniversary of the river’s designation, but somehow Arkansas allowed a concentrated 6,000 hog feeding operation on Big Creek to pollute the Buffalo River with runoff from tons of pig crap. The resulting increase in algae and e-coli bacteria was damaging water quality in the park significantly. After protests, the hog operation was halted (and paid off handsomely), but local politicians have not been willing to make the ban permanent.

I woke in Tyler Bend Campground all ready to paddle 10 miles of the middle section from Baker Ford to Gilbert (where someone from the General Store would leave my car), but a sudden line of thunderstorms dissuaded me. That storm system killed three people in Texas with tornadoes and brought lots of lightning to this river in Arkansas, so I was glad to hit the road early instead. Pollution from either industrial ranching or fossil fuel burning is taking the fun out of some of my best trips.

Despite rural development—like Branson—, the Ozarks are still very beautiful, and the river is 135 miles of free-flowing nature. Nearby there’s a 100 foot wide natural bridge, one of many alcoves and interesting geologic features in the area that likely caused the French trappers to describe the area as having arches or “aux arcs” (say it out loud).

Americans, being poor linguists and unaware of the remote arches and bridges upstream, have long been confused about the origin of the name “Ozarks”, speculating that the French were talking about natives with curved bows or some bend in the river. This is moronic, as all bows and rivers are curved, so the French explorers would have no reason to use such a useless description. Americans had similar problems in understanding the French name for the Canadian River, which obviously derived from the Spanish word cañada, as the river passes Texas’ Palo Duro, the second largest US canyon. Rather than try to understand foreign languages, Americans assumed the French explorers did not know how to Canada by river.

Great Egg Harbor River

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This park needs some explanation. Behind over-developed Ocean and Atlantic Cities in New Jersey, there’s a large underdeveloped lowland pitch pine forest with rivers, creeks, swamps and bogs. The ground is sandy, so colonial farmers wrote off the whole area as the “pine barrens”. There were a few failed attempts at industry, including mills, glassworks and munitions, but the lack of elevation meant little hydro power. In the 1920’s Atlantic City boomed, but the swamps were mostly for bootleg gin and mosquitoes.

In the 1970’s developers and environmentalists faced off to decide the fate of the remaining forest. By then, cranberry and blueberry farmers had begun commercial farming, roads crisscrossed the area, and there was a diverse mix of increasing rural and residential growth. Development is the primary cause of unnatural fire suppression, which changes the ecosystem over time. The pine land was becoming valuable and the forest at risk.

Environmentalists argued that the unique pine forest was home to several rare species—including Pygmy pine, a tree frog, an orchid and many birds—, and, by adapting to historic wildfires, the hot-burning pitch pine trees became dominant by regrowing faster than hardwoods. They also pointed out that underneath the entire sandy swamp was a huge pristine freshwater underground aquifer that supplied places like Atlantic City. Develop the forest, and you create big problems in the future. The battle is still ongoing, but much of the forest is now protected. UNESCO has recognized the Pinelands as an International Biosphere Reserve.

The park service only protects the main river—just the water—, and much of the land alongside the river is maintained piecemeal by different county’s parks. The largest undeveloped pine forest area is managed by the state, and there are four state forests in the Pinelands, along with many wildlife reserves and other parks. The Pinelands National Reserve is affiliated with but not run by the National Park Service. Since I’m visiting official national park units, my challenge was finding the river amid the forest.

I stayed at one of the county campgrounds near Mays Landing, Lake Lenape West in Atlantic County, where it’s easy to put a kayak in the water and paddle around. Lake Lenape itself is like a neighborhood recreation area, with a ridiculous little lighthouse, but if you paddle up to the top, there are nesting bald eagles where the river enters. There is at least one campground upstream, Winding River, that rents equipment, but be advised that there are likely obstructions from low hanging trees potentially blocking progress near that section of the river. Estell Manor Park downstream has a nature center with extremely knowledgeable park partners who patiently explained all this to me and directed me to the side channel in the river above, where there’s an artesian well and the overgrown ruins of an old business. It’s a fascinating area in an underrated state that just requires a bit of extra effort to figure out and explore.

Assateague National Seashore

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This sleepy foal was waiting by the roadside while his Mom grazed. The wild horses on the Maryland shore have adapted since escaping Spanish shipwrecks maybe 400 years ago. Their fur is thicker, legs short & stocky, and they have large bellies to help process the extra water needed to eliminate all the salt on their fodder. Colonists also kept horses on the island to evade livestock taxes, so the gene pool is healthy. The park service has an innovative birth control program to limit the mares to one foal, which involves firing (and retrieving) darts, and that keeps the population under control. While they’re not a native species, the environment would likely have had some ungulates (hooved animals), so the park service supports this popular wild population that run free on the entire island.

The park is in the Delmarva area—meaning Delaware, Maryland and Virginia all share the peninsula—, and the island runs around 40 miles along Maryland’s Atlantic coast. The Chincoteague Bay side is more scenic with more birds, but the beach side gets more visitors. There are a couple easy boardwalk hikes at the north end, along with a state beach section and access to the long roadless midsection. The Marsh Nature Trail was the prettiest when I visited, but check conditions at the visitor center before crossing the bridge to the island. The Virginia end of the island supports a different, less wild herd which is managed by ‘saltwater cowboys’, mostly firefighters, who sell the excess foals.

Catoctin Mountain Park

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In July of 1929 the police raided the Blue Blazes Stills here and a deputy was killed. The original operation was destroyed, but bootleggers produced thousands of gallons of ‘whiskey’ in 18 huge vats. When FDR was elected to deal with the Great Depression, he decided to clean up the eastern end of the Blue Ridge Mountains in northern Maryland, regrow the forest and employ people to create campgrounds, trails, rustic lodges and the bootleg still exhibit above. Camp David is in the immediate vicinity, and since I wasn’t invited there, I stayed here in one of the historic lodges at Camp Misty Mountain in my sleeping bag, a short walk to parking and restrooms, for $50. The sites are open from May to October, tent sites cost $30, larger facilities are available for groups, and there’s even an accessible pool, which FDR would appreciate.