O' Blackwater
My apologies to the Doobie Brothers for slightly modifying the lyric for the title of this post. But the song kept popping into my head when I made a return visit to the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Last time it was a short photography scouting trip... to see if this area was worth getting to know more deeply through multiple visits... It most certainly is!
This time, the photography was secondary. This visit was to be an epic cycling and kayaking trip with my college roommate, Rich. We loaded up both bikes and both kayaks on the Jeep and made the two and a half hour drive south. If you stay on the highway, you will miss everything. But fifteen minutes after leaving the fast food strip of Route 50 in Cambridge MD, you are in another world. A world of beautiful marshland, expansive open water views, incredible wildlife, and almost no people. It is perfect.
We did 104 miles on our bikes over four days. We saw countless egrets, great blue herons, osprey, and bald eagles during our rides. They were everywhere. We rode our bikes on my favorite stretch of asphalt… Maple Dam Road! We rode our bikes on a piece of land that was only a roadwidth wide, surrounded by open water on both sides. And on one 28 mile ride, we were passed by only four cars. We rode until we couldn't ride anymore.
We also kayaked the slow moving marsh rivers of the Blackwater area. We saw jellyfish in one river (from the bay), American eels darting on the river surface, sea gulls gliding down and then swooping back up, and fish jumping out of the warm water into the even hotter air!
And while the photography was secondary, it pays to always be ready. The camera equipment was in the Jeep ready for the storm light we got one fine evening. We thought we were done for the day, when I slammed on the brakes as we crossed over a stream, glowing red with the last light of the setting sun. I pulled over and rapidly worked to find something interesting to go with the incredible sky. The image above seemed to capture that last "flash" of light at the end of a great day.
I'm sure there will be future blog posts about more trips to this special area that I am just getting acquainted with.