Paddling the Marsh Part 3

One more post about our paddle around the marsh at the south end of Lake Eugenia.  Besides following the Beaver River upstream a little, I wanted to see if we could find the entrance to the Little Beaver River, and a narrow channel that supposedly connected two parts of the marsh.

Drifting past the log I ended yesterday's post with, I headed among the stumps and bulrushes to hunt for the Little Beaver River.

 In places there were plenty of these small lily pads.

And lots of stumps like this - hundreds of them.

I found a small cover along the south shore and headed into it in search of the creek.

And this is what I found - the entrance of the Little Beaver, totally blocked off by a logjam.  But I could see and hear water on the other side.  I later confirmed by the air photo below that this was the place.

We turned around and headed north back down the lake.

Past millions of bulrushes.

And then a surprise, in the middle of the marshy shore this rock pile where someone had made little Inukshuks (well little rock figures of some sort anyway).  This lake flooded what were then farms, so it's quite likely that this was a rock pile at the edge of a field 100 years ago.

And we found the channel I was wondering about, and paddled through to check out the far side of the marsh.  It turned out to be much less interesting, with no creek of any sort flowing in, just marsh all along the shore.

So we paddled back through the channel and straight across the lake to the cottage where we had started.  I think this channel must be kept open by cottagers to let them get their boats through.

This is an experiment, but I photographed the computer screen showing the air photo of where we paddled.  We left from a cottage almost in the centre of the picture, and paddled south toward the river entrance.  The light brown around the edges is bulrush marsh, the picture taken in late fall.  You can see the Beaver River flowing in from the right, and we made it up to about the edge of this photo.  Then in the centre at the bottom you can see the little inlet I explored and the Little Beaver flowing in from the south, along with the logjam that blocks it.  You can also see the narrow channel into the marsh to the west, just above the centre of the left shore.  The road across the lake at the top is the causeway.  Hope you enjoyed joining me on this paddle.  We were out paddling again today, on the North Saugeen, a fabulous trip; I'll get to it next week perhaps.