This page was last modified: June 21 2020.
Paddling Resources
Paddling Holliday Lake VA
Books
I love books and am always on the lookout for good ones. Here are some that I've found especially useful and interesting.
The Quiet Water series published by Appalachian Mountain Club Books This is a great series of guides for paddling lakes, ponds, and quiet rivers and streams. The books provide clear description of many great paddles. Plus they also provide short essays on various topics. For example, the New Hampshire and Vermont book has essays on carnivorous plants, black flies and mosquitoes, snapping turtles, and other residents of the wild. Anyone planning a trip to New England or New York should check to see if a guide has been published for the state you're interested in.
Guide to Sea Kayaking in North Carolina by Pam Malec. Book is sub-titled Best Day Trips and Tours from Currituck to Cape Fear. It provides 35 trips along the coast of North Carolina. Suggestions for where to stay and eat are also provided. The trips are clearly described and are certainly well worth doing. We have done some of the trips and plan to do more.
Sea Kayaking the Carolinas by Jim Bannon. This is another great book that covers trips in the coastal areas of both North and South Carolina. It provides a range of trips from short day trips to longer weekender trips. The book covers inland trips, for example Merchant's Mill Pond NC, (a trip we've done and plan to do again) as well as trips along the coast. There is little overlap between this and the book above.
A Paddler's Guide to Eastern North Carolina by Bob Benner and Tom McCloud. This guide is devoted to trips on rivers and streams in the various river basins in North Carolina. Put in and take outs are suggested. Book provides short description of the sections of the rivers and streams that are suitable for kayaks and canoes.
Web Resources
We all know that the web is a great place to find information. However, it can be hard to find exactly or even close to exactly what you're looking for. Goggle and other search engines seem to provide too many irrelevant suggestions. With that in mind here are some sites that I find to be very useful and interesting.
Paddling links
- Paddling.com Another complete site. Click on the Go Paddle tab for paddling suggestions organized by region and state
- Paddling in Maine. Informative site of interest to us because we plan to visit Maine in 2009.
- Waterlines a Maine Paddling Journal
- Paddle Maine Information about paddling in Maine--water levels, whitewater paddling, lakes and flat water, etc.
- Paddling in Virginia. Devoted to describing paddles in Virginia. If you're interested in paddling Virginia this is a good place to look.
- Cape Fear Paddlers. Web site for the Cape Fear Paddlers. Trip descriptions and photos.
- Paddling Berkeley County South Carolina. Trips descriptions, pdf maps, and other information on paddling in Berkeley County SC. Examples of trails:Santee Canal Lake Moultrie, James Town Santee River, and many others.
- Edisto River, SC, paddling.. Check this out for paddles on the Edisto River in SC.
- NC Coastal Paddling. A large list of paddling trips in the NC coastal area. Trail maps and trip descriptions are provided. Trips are not limited to locations right on the coast.
- NOAA site for tide and other data. Site provides near term official tide predictions.
- WWW Tide and Current Predictor. Provides unofficial tide predictions. Longer term predictions than offered by NOAA.
- Visit ACE Basin. Web site for the ACE Basin in South Carolina
- Aweigh.com. Check out the Kayaking Sections.
- Paddling the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Trip reports of several paddles on the NC Outer Banks.