By Peter Clayton

It’s been a decade since we went upstream on Pellicer, and then we only went to the I-95 bridge – today we paddled 7.7 miles going under the I-95 and US 1 bridges then turning left onto the continuation of Pellicer which became narrower and much more interesting. Going out, we found a great rest stop on the north side between the two bridges which made the extra length doable.

Conditions couldn’t have been better – going out, the water was like glass with no breeze and we had clear blue skies and a warming sun for the duration. We were in the water by 8:30 and out at 12:30 with Smokin’ D’s BBQ our lunch destination. Craig, Mike and Ellis met John and me at the boat ramp at Faver-Dykes and we didn’t see anyone on the water until the very end.

Excitement was provided by John who earned an MCK Dunk Club sticker at the furthest point paddled when he turned to look at something and flipped. Fortunately it was in “stand up” depth and Ellis had a towel so John was fine after another stop at the rest area. On the way out of the park we found about a dozen rangers conducting a “controlled burn” along the road – see Mike’ photo. This is definitely a paddle we’ll want to repeat.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

•