Paddling Holliday Lake State Park Virginia

Holliday Lake, Virginia
Holliday Lake in Holliday Lake State Park, Virginia

The weather has finally turned nice, so we loaded our smaller kayak, Clem, into the RV and headed to Holliday Lake State Park in Virginia. The park is about 125 miles from home and is near Appomattox Court House.

RV at our campsite
RV and Clem at our campsite, Holliday Lake State Park

Holliday Lake State Park is a very nice park. The campsites have water and electric hookups for the RV, the bathrooms for the area we camped in were new, and the showers had lots of hot water. And the staff was wonderful.

Frog slide at Holliday Lake State Park
Beach and frog slide at Holliday Lake State Park

There are several trails in the park, but we came to paddle--not hike. So we didn't explore any of the trails. The lake features a swimming area with a big frog slide. Mid April is not the time to go swimming, however, although the water wasn't too bad when we had to wade to launch Clem.

Azalea
Azalea
White flower
Cattails
Cattails
Rocks and flowers
Rocks and Azaleas Holliday Lake State Park
Reeds
Turtle
Turtle, Holliday Lake
Holliday Creek
Holliday Creek
Rental Kayaks on Bank of Lake
Rental Kayaks
Hauling Clem out of lake
Me in water ready to haul Clem out of Holliday Lake

We had a great time paddling the lake. This part of Virginia is about 3 weeks or so behind us so the dogwoods were not yet in full bloom, and the azaleas were just starting to bloom. In another week or so the hillside around the lake should be spectacular with azaleas and dogwoods. We even saw a few redbuds starting to bloom. And there were a few wild flowers blooming.

While we were paddling we was a beautiful bald eagle. It was quite a sight.

The ranger said it was too early to see many birds. We saw quite a few turkey vultures flying above the lake but not much else.

The turtles seemed to be enjoying the warm weather and we saw several sunning themselves as we paddled by. There were a few people fishing and a couple of them seemed to be having good luck.

One nice thing about the lake is that no gas motors are allowed. Electric motors are fine, but no gas motors. Should make for a quiet place in the summer.

We paddled around the lake into various inlets and then we paddled up Holliday Creek for about 0.3 miles before we ran out of water.

The park holds gold panning workshops that take the miners to Holliday Creek. We didn't find any gold in our paddle up the creek. All we found was a pretty place.

After we finished paddling, we drove to Appomattox Court House to see where Lee surrendered to Grant.