We had another marvelous paddle today of about 6 miles. A friend reminded us that one can drive to the portage from Raquette Lake to Forked Lake, and put boats in there. So that is what we did.
We paddled to the western end of the lake where there were acres of white water lilies.
Then we paddled about 1/2 mile up the winding Brandreth Lake Outlet
until we hit a bit of a snag. These downed trees block the creek
but there is a way around, just barely. This is the view from upstream, on the way back down. You basically sit down in the bottom of the boat and push yourself under the log. There is a bit of a carry upstream of this point and a steep bank to go down to get back to the water.
We were glad we made the effort since we paddled about 1/4 mile farther before we hit shallow water and quite a few rocks and decided to turn around. If we had been more ambitious we might have made it farther.
After we came back out of the stream we stopped at a very nice campsite on the north shore of the lake, as marked by all the squiggles on the map - I forgot to put down my phone which contains the GPS and walked all around on shore stretching my legs and exploring. After lunch we headed back to our starting point. We had planned to do much more paddling on the lake, but W was tired, so we will do it another time.
We had planned one more stop on the way home, at Buttermilk Falls. There was no one around when we drove past the parking lot earlier this morning, but we wanted to get on the water first. Boy was that a mistake. When we drove past again this afternoon there were about two dozen cars overflowing the lot. Next time, we will have to stop there first instead.
