Foxwoods or Kayaking??? 5/5/10

[Briggsy]

Of course kayaking won. My wife scored a free room at Foxwoods and not wanting to spend a fabulous day off work indoors, I duly dropped her off at the front door of the casino in the morning and headed 20 minutes south to South Lyme where I parked at the Four Mile River boat ramp off Oakridge Dr. (which is off Rt 156, exit 71 off I-95).The weather was perfect, 75 deg. with a slight onshore breeze. I launched just after low tide and headed out under the railroad bridge into the bay where there were a number of small rocky islands to explore

low tide at launch

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Rocky Neck State Park

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I gave my self a navigation challenge to find the position of Johns Rock with compass triangulation and when I checked at home later with a GPS waypoint I hade made found that I was dead on!!! Next off to North and South Brother Islands to check out the birdlife.

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seagulls waiting for me to hit the rocks

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Red Nun #2 with Long Island visible in the background

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From #2it was over to Long Ledge for a bite to eat and to enjoy the view.

tons of these jellyfish everywhere

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Nesting cormorants

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lunchtime

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With an hour or so before high tide I explored Watts Island and Griswold Island checking out some of the summer homes.

Griswold Is.

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Osprey chick, the mother was flying around delivering fish about every 10 mins.

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Time was getting on so I retraced most of the route getting back to the launch dead on high tide.

N.Y.- Boston Railroad line

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The map route was drawn (badly) on my PC.
Trip time 4hrs including messing around taking pics and having lunch. Distance about 10 miles (GPS)

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Met the wife at 5.00 after watching the parking valet's mouth drop as I came swinging round the corner to hotel reception with the kayak on the truck. PPR at Hard Rock Cafe followed by losing at the evil slots.

[Chip]

And a fine choice it was. Nice pics

[kayakerjnj]

That would have been my pick too

[norm]

Looks like you found a great spot to paddle. Thanks for sharing!

[Birdseye]

Nice Report Briggsy. Never paddled CT but would like to get down there one of these days.