November 11, 1999

Veteran's Day Paddle on a National Disgrace

Trip #63

12 miles

MAP

Only a few wrong turns getting to Anacostia Park. Once there I almost didn't recognize the boat ramp. One half of it was buried under sticks and plastic soda bottles. The other half of the ramp was clear so I backed my truck down it and unload the boat and gear.

There were several floating barriers in the water and they had managed to collect quite a bit of trash. Quite disgusting looking, but nothing compared to what I was about to encounter. Once on the water and under the Railroad Bridge the water looked like a flooded landfill. You could not paddle without banging into all sorts of floating trash. I had paddled this part of the river last March, and it was dirty then, but not like today. Today there was more trash than there was water and I spent quite some time thinking about just turning around and going home. This is not a weekend project for 20-30 environmental volunteers to clean up, this river is in seriously bad shape. It needs an environmental study to determine the source of the trash so it can be stopped at its source from washing into the river.

After two solid miles of poling through the garbage, it began to let up. It didn't go away, it just got to the point where I no longer felt like contributing to the mess by regurgitating my breakfast. I realized that by the GPS I had missed the entrance to the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens, so I turned around to find it. I did find a breach in the river wall where my map said should take me back into the gardens, but it didn't go far. So I paddled north again for about a half mile until I came to another breach in the wall. This was the entrance, but it showed as solid land on my GPS.

It was high tide and the water within the garden was shallow. I would caution anyone doing this to do it on a rising tide, as it would be easy to get stranded if the tide is running out. There wasn't much to see from the water, this needs to be explored from shore. So I headed out again into the river and again turned north.

The wind was starting to pick up a little as I continued on under Rt. 50 and could soon see a lot of buildings ahead. The woods dropped away and a marina without any boats appeared on my right. I traveled under 1A and the water became shallow. Where the river branched I took the left fork but soon ran out of water to paddle at Rt. 1 so I turned around to head home. The water here was clearer and it was obvious this water was not tidal up at this point.

The wind started blowing hard and I found myself running at 5-6 MPH for most the way back. The wind had turned cold too. I was wishing I could just beach and walk down to my truck rather than paddle back through the trash. But the further I paddled the less trash I saw in the middle of the river. It was all being blown to the edge and into large trash rafts so thick you could probably walk on them. I stayed to the center of the river to not get caught up in the sights along the shore.

There was some guys messing with their boat back at the ramps, so I had to pull my kayak out over the half that was covered in trash. I loaded up the truck and was glad to call this trip over.