Thursday, May 1, 2008

Water, Water Everywhere

What a rotten time to be out of commission for paddling!

There are endless places to drop a kayak in the water and take off for as long as you want to paddle. Paddling on the rivers wouldn't be a smart thing to do - way too much debris. But, with all the water in the floodplains right now, who needs rivers?

If I could paddle, I'd probably put in at Millrace Flats Wildlife Management Area, just north of Wapello. You can see all the water as you drive between the Iowa River bridge on highway 61 and Wapello. The picture here is of an area that is normally a field. While there is always some water along that stretch, right now there is almost no dry ground. Right now it's a great place to watch wildlife - maybe a bit too good as it's hard to keep my eyes on the road.

It's been tough though to watch the wood ducks go from guarding nests to swimming around the submerged boxes. If you look closely at this photo, you'll see just the top of a box in the background; several others are completely submerged.

After I finished paddling the 700 acres at Millrace - which would probably take just a little while - I'd move on to the 2000+ acres at Horseshoe Bend division of Port Louisa National Wildlife Refuge. It's another former floodplain of the Iowa River that's currently holding excess water from the river. I'm sure I'd see lots of ducks, geese, herons and maybe a few critters that are flooded out of their homes like beavers and muskrats.

Then I'd head to the Odess Water Trail, even though the signs are all under water. It'd be fun because you can go anywhere right now. After that ....

No, I won't whine anymore because it probably won't be as long as we'd like before we'll see these water levels again (last time was in 2001). Hopefully we'll be back to normal levels before I'm back on the water.

Water going over the lower spillway at Odessa Wildlife Management Area