Stewards of the White Oak River Basin

There were 11 of us that showed up today to observe the Trent River where it has been cleared of fallen trees in accordance with the Grant Jones County Commissioners have obtained to make this lovely river navigable and usable again.

This is the group that put-in at the Thomas Waller farm. This is a very steep natural access.
That is Ronnie Dale on the left who escorted us and Joanne Somerday of New Bern and Ken Court of Jacksonville and Jim Niedermeyer of Hubert and John Clecker of New bern.


This is view going down the river showing the very
high banks and the open woods.













That is Joanne taking our picture as we came down stream.
In back of her is one the the fallen trees cut off to open passage.

These are part of the men with J & J Construction &

Environmental LLC who we ran into at the Rte 58 bridge

and who helped us launch our boats on the steep banks.

That is beautiful heavy, thick green moss. The picture does not do it justice.

Yes, those are icicles. We have never seen any thing like this before.

2008-01-15 Trent River Trenton to Quaker Neck Country Club

2007-01-08 Blue Creek Jacksonville,NC

Our plan was to paddle to the 24/258 bridge over
Blue Creek. We were unable to get there!

This was due to the low water level in Blue Creek, due to the drought.
There was very little if any flow to the river itself. We will need
substantial rain fall before we can paddle the upper reaches of all our
lovely creeks. Our lack of hurricanes this year has had its downsides
but I guess we can live with it if we do get some very good springs rains.

We saw evidence of cuttings of fallen trees. This allowed us to get to
the point of no water flow. We thank Onslow County for obtaining the
Grant Money to make this possible. We understand this cutting has been
done far upstream and we look forward to paddling it when Mother Nature
gives us the water to do so.


The trip plans called for going up Little Creek and circling around
the lakes of the old water treatment plants of Jacksonville and coming
back to the New River along Maple Street. Low water prevented this
also. But, the alligator weed is gone!. But now we know we have to have
high water to make this paddle. It wasn't just the alligator weed that
stopped us last time. Winter weather killed the alligator weed! Let's
hope is stays dead!

We headed home to the Marina Cafe Ramp a whole hour early. Brian Wheat
loaded our trash in his pick-up truck. Thanks Brian! The trash was
surprisingly light. The usual cans and bottles occasionally and plastic
bags. The big items were a trash can, 3 five gallon buckets, a cooler
and one tire. Lance Goodrum loaded the tire on his kayak and then
unloaded it into our canoe We had to pass up another tire just short of
starting out. Could not lift it into our canoe.

We all had a great and most unusual day on our waters. It was
obviously enjoyed by all. Many thousands more could and would enjoy them
if the City of Jacksonville and The County of Onslow and
Camp Lejeune would designate and mark Canoe Trails. They exist. They are
provided my nature. They are there. Let's make them usable and bring in
tourist dollars in doing so.

This paddle today was initiated by Stewards of the White Oak River
Basin. This Basin exists from Pender County line to the outer banks.
Everyone who has ever paddled with us is automatically a Steward. These
folks today came from The New River Foundation, The Crystal Coast Canoe
and Kayak Club, Coastal Carolina Kayakers and Twin River Rivers Paddle
Club of New Bern.

This pelican, aka Boss Hawg, was perched just outside the marina.

Boss Hawg is wondering what happened to #2. Is this his harem?

George and Jennie.

this is a test

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Here is a video that I (Doug Toltzman) shot on the Great Lake, on the morning of December 27, 2007. The video opens at the put-in and ends when we stop for lunch. See the earlier blog entry from the 2007-12-27 trip on Great Lake for more details about the trip.

[Video Link]

You'll need Quicktime (version 6 or higher) to play this video.

Photos and comments by Douglas Toltzman

These first few photos were taken at the put in. The first one is of Elmer Eddy and his grandson Jack Eddy. They are joined by Jim in the next frame. We were joined by Jen and her husband (the next 2 photos), and the last photo from the put-in features Elmer and the great Brian Wheat.





Embarking on our journey, we had a light tail wind that helped us along. We were all overdressed, as the temperature rose rapidly in the morning and the sun was shining on us all day. Our trip up Pettiford creek was really very pleasant. I'll get to the return trip further down.




It was really difficult to get all of these boaters in one photo. I'd have everyone in this photo (above), if Brian Wheat hadn't been in such a hurry to paddle out of my frame (lower left of photo).
The next 8 frames were taken at our lunch stop, atop of an old, earthen dam that was breached long ago. In spite of the low water temperature, some of our party decided to take a quick swim here. I was going to swim across myself, but I opted to stay dry this time. As a rule, I never pass up an opportunity to go swimming.






Having finished lunch, we paddled the last leg of our trip, up to the beaver dam. Given that the wind had been gaining strength and would be against us most of the way back, we opted to turn around here (about 3.5 miles up from where we started). The following pictures are of the beaver dam (mostly obscured by the rising tide and probably some wind tide), and some final shots of our fearless group, turning their boats around to head back down the creek, against the incoming tide and a strong, gusty wind.




Here is the GPS plot of our trip (total of 7.1 miles). The put-in (just off of HW 58) is on the left end of the yellow line. The first blue flag is the actual location of the HW 58 bridge. The next blue flag marks a split in the creek where we went left (river right*). Where you see the triangle of blue flags, the one on the upper left is a clearing to which we hiked. The line leading up to it follows the top of the old dam. The blue flag (of the 3 flags) on the top right is where we stopped for lunch. The bottom blue flag (of the 3 flags) marks the point where a road enters on river right*. Where the yellow line ends at the upper right is where we turned around at the beaver dam.

*right side, facing downstream