Kayaking the Middle Branch of the St Regis River

We finally took a nice long paddle today. We drove to Santa Clara and launched the kayak onto the middle branch of the Saint Regis River, where we had never been before. We did a 12 mile round trip paddle from Route 458 upstream (south) to the rapids and then back downstream. This map only shows a portion of the route.

The weather was perfect and we had the gorgeous river all to ourselves.

The only disappointing thing was the lack of landing spots. The river channel was quite deep and steep sided so there was little opportunity to land. We did manage to pull up on a couple of mud flats but couldn't get inland. One map we have showed a carry around the rapids and we had hoped to get out there and stretch our legs a bit. But we saw no sign of the trail.

We saw lots of great blue herons and belted kingfishers and a beautiful yellow warbler. The most exciting wildlife sighting was a beaver that swam across the river in front of us then slapped its tail and dove out of sight.

There were many flowers in bloom, most of which we saw last year on our paddle on the lower Osgood River.