With all of the craziness that’s been going on the last few weeks I hadn’t had a chance to take one of my boats out or join any of the regularly monthly trips. Yeah, I was kayaking in a cave in Belize last week, but you can never get enough time on the water. This was a Second Saturday and the Edisto River Canoe and Kayak Trail Association (ERCK) had a trip down one of my favorite stretches of the river. This would be a ten-mile trip from Long Creek Landing down to Martin’s Landing.
Since this was further down on the Edisto, I drove down Friday so I wouldn’t have as far to drive early Saturday morning. I booked a very cheap motel in Walterboro that turned out to be quite nice, despite some of the bad reviews. I over-indulged at Duke’s BBQ, then spent the evening catching up on Star Fleet Academy.
Early Saturday I drove on down to the landing. I was the first to arrive, so I spent some time playing with my drone. I didn’t plan to take it with me on the kayak, but I wanted some overhead shots.
Eventually other paddlers arrived. The first several of them thought I was in charge since I had my Edisto River Keeper hat on. I had to disappoint them. Soon, though, Jon and the rest of the ERCK group arrived. There would be about 20 people joining us, including many of my friends from previous trips.
Several of us who had already unloaded our boats headed on down to Martin’s Landing early to await the shuttle. I found a nice parking spot under a tree, right next to an abandoned boat.
Just a quick coat of paint and I’m sure it would be fine.
Other vehicles arrive and we loaded onto the van for the trip back to Long Creek. We got on the water at about 10:30 am.
The weather was absolutely perfect. The river level was high from recent rains and there was a good current to move things along.
When I went to set up my GoPro I discovered that it didn’t have the SD card in it. I had swiped it to use in the drone, which I had left in the car. I just had the Olympus and my iPhone for photos. So, it’s probably a good thing I didn’t try to use it in Belize. I would have been disappointed. After awhile my photos of the Edisto all start to look the same, so I could just reuse some from a previous trip and no one would be wiser. But the river is always so beautiful that it’s hard not to want to try to capture it.
We did part of this stretch back in 2023, so I have lots of photos and descriptions from that trip. I’m not going to repeat it here. I will say that on the previous trip I marked lots of nice beach spots in my GPS for future reference. On this trip all of those beaches were now under water. There wasn’t a good spot to stop for a long time.
You get all flavors of the Edisto on this stretch, from wide open and straight to twisting and narrow. At one point we met two johnboats coming upriver. They said they had to turn back because there was a tree blocking the river. We did, indeed, find a tree, but our kayaks were able to get over it with no problem at all.
Since it was early spring, some of the trees had started budding out. The cypress trees were dormant, with Spanish moss, hanging from the limbs.
We passed Levenston’s Bluff and several decided to pull out and stop for lunch. I’d had a big breakfast, so I was OK with continuing. I got far enough ahead of the group that I was able to explore a canal that I’d marked on the previous trip. This went straight back from the main stem, eventually coming to a rather unusual bridge. It looked like a bridge with metal trusses had washed away. Its replacement was an old flatbed 18 wheeler, and the bed of the bridge was simple wooden pallets. The trailer still had its running lights and mud flaps.
The canal branched off to the left just before the bridge, and another part continued on straight past it. However, I was a bit confused. There was a current, and it was moving AWAY from the main stem. I was tempted to explore further and see where it went, but I didn’t want the rest of the group wondering about me. I paddled back out the way I came.
There were more twists and turns, and it started to get rather hot. Eventually we reached Parker’s Ferry. In the last blog post about this I wrote extensively about the Revolutionary War battle fought at this site, so I’m not going to repeat that here. Not far from Parker’s Ferry was Martin’s Landing.
With my side quests the trip came to just under 11 miles. It was a great trip, and it was good to be back on one of my favorite rivers.
If you want to see more photos, check out my album on Flickr.