Kayaking on a Crisp Autumn Day

One of the best ways to take in nature's beauty is by kayaking. Whether you're paddling along a sleepy river, exploring a salt marsh, or catching the waves of the ocean this fun sport enables you to go places and see things that you'd never be able to explore on land.

Leaf peeping takes on new meaning when you are in a kayak. On a recent chilly autumn day we took in all the glorious colors during a paddle down the Nemasket river.

On this day the river was calm and the air still so it made for an easy paddle. Here you can see the river looked like a mirror.



As the river was winding we started to hit some thick vegetation. This actually made it challenging to paddle.

Turning the corner we started to spot something moving. I grabbed for my camera and....

....look what I saw! A blue heron standing proudly in the marsh.


Continuing on we spotted many brightly colored maple trees like the tall one below with dazzling red leaves.
There were a few large rocks and boulders on the side of the river. Some were actually right in the middle of the river and we had to navigate around them.


As you can see Andy paddles much faster than I do and he's always way ahead of me.... hey whatever happened to the buddy system?






We often hit spots where the trees made a gorgeous canopy over the river. Some canopies were so low we'd have to duck to go under them.


Once we were through the first canopy we saw some really interesting dead trees and branches.




Here was an old abandoned cottage. When we got to this area we could hear coyotes howling.... I was glad I was on the water! It made for a spooky pre-Halloween trip.




I love the way the leaves look when they have fallen on the water. I wish the camera could have captured the colors better because they were so radiant.




We paddled on for 3 hours and enjoyed some more bird watching. There were a few other kayakers and one couple canoeing that passed by us. As the sun started to set we knew we had to head back to the boat ramp. With heavy hearts we returned to our cars. There won't be many more days this season like this one. Soon the trees will be bare and the river frozen over, but for the moment we felt like we went back in time - we could just imagine what the Indians saw and the pilgrims who settled not too far from here in Plymouth.