Kayak & Paddleboard Tours

This is my first summer with CK, and it’s been one of the best.  I’ve been privileged enough to learn the business under Mitch and Jen this summer while doing my Internship for West Virginia University (aka Coastal Kayak’s first intern). I’ve gotten to work alongside some of the best and learn all sides of the job.  I was able to put together a training manual of all the birds, critters, plants and history of all the tours, which is something they have wanted for awhile. Coastal Kayak is definitely a place where you should bring your families when you visit the beach, and even go on one of their tours.  You won’t regret it!   This past Saturday, after the storms rolled through Neil and I had a great family of paddlers, and we

Hello my Coastal Kayak friends! It's so great to be back this summer for my fifth year! I'm so happy the weather is finally warm. Winter was long but I did get to enjoy a bit of traveling with Salisbury University, while I took a photography class abroad, exploring London and Paris. While I enjoyed every minute of it some of my favorite memories would include traveling to Wiltshire, an English countryside village home to Lacock Abbey (a country house that looks more like a medieval castle), and also, re-creating the Abbey Road album cover, as I channeled Paul McCartney. While in Paris, I indulged in shopping at Galleries Lafayette, many museums and french cuisine; I love escargot.         June is always a great time for eco tours! The bald eagles are

  I’ve got some early season kayak tour pictures from last weekend. Glorious weather both Saturday and Sunday, and small groups we were able to get to see some nice sights. Saturday at Cypress Tour the water was high (good thing) and we were able to get back to Raccoon Pond and watch a doe browsing on wetland plants (arrow arum, I believe). We also saw quite a few large red bellied cooters, and the prothonotary warblers were just-a-singin’-away. Sunday we chased down the new eagle’s nest on our Little Assawoman Back Bay Tour. We saw two adults and one immature, though the nest itself is hard to see. We also saw plenty of osprey soaring and chirping, and a cow-nosed ray, a rare sight in the Little Bay, which is a long way from

Just checking in from Assateague. I did 2 tours down there last weekend. The weather could not have been more pleasant and the water was clear-as-a-bell, despite heavy rains the day before. We saw a big cow-nose ray, seeding eel-grass, some sponges, and little blue crabs scurrying about the shallows near Egging Island. On Sunday, the ponies were right at water’s edge, good for photo-ops!

This winter has been truly awful. And to top it off, that darned ground hog saw his shadow so it looks like we can kiss an early Spring good-bye. A late-winter escape to a warm weather paddling spot has never sounded better! Here are a few of our favorites: The 10,000 Islands and Everglades south of Marco Island The area south of Marco Island on the Gulf Coast of Florida is a maze of mangrove islands that line the coast like a jade necklace. They are uninhabited and some of them have beautiful, white sand beaches that you can have all to yourself - perfect for camping, or a picnic, or shell-hunting, or bird-watching, or napping. Most of the time, the Gulf is pretty flat in this area, although it can get windy. Once in

Many summers, by the first week in August, the water level is so low at our Cypress Tour that it is nearly impossible to do our tours there. This year that is definitely not the case! We've had plenty of rain which makes it easy to do lots of exploring. The other day our guide, Sarah, reported seeing hundreds of butterflies there. She thought that most of them were male Eastern Tiger Swallowtail but reported seeing some blue ones as well which could have been the female or possibly the Eastern-tailed blue butterfly. Our Burton's Island Wildlife Tour is tidal so the heavy rains don't effect the water level. Although they are getting harder to find, we are still seeing horseshoe crabs on most of our tours. The osprey chicks are getting bigger and will

The week started off with an exciting dolphin sighting on our Burton's Island Wildlife Tour! In our 19 years of doing tours in that area we have never seen dolphins there before but Todd spotted them just before landing on the sandbar and decided to follow them for a few hundred yards. On Stefan's Burton's Island Tour a flock of brown pelicans were performing tactical maneuvers over the group of paddlers and he reported that hermit crabs had invaded the sand bar. On Mitch's Woodland Tour the paddlers saw eagles, got a close-up look at a painted turtle, and were treated to a colorful show of flowering plants in the creek. Due to the amount of rain we've had this year, the water level is higher than normal and the aquatic plants and flowers are

The horseshoe crabs are here! It's the most horseshoe crabs I've ever seen. They were everywhere on the island. The water was incredibly clear so we saw lots of terrapin, also. The osprey were busy adding to their nests and fishing. We also saw oyster catchers, blue herons, snowy egrets, and lots of horseshoe crab eggs!                  

We had a gorgeous day for our Assateague Tour last week. Light winds, comfortable temperatures, blue skies, great paddlers - couldn't have been better! We saw a lone horseshoe crab, cormorants, snowy egrets, brants, buffleheads, and hooded mergansers. The ponies weren't on the bayside, but they rallied for our drive out of the park.    

With all of the nice weather the backwaters have warmed up and we have been running off-site rentals as well as  a tour yesterday. A fantastic day to be on the water - we saw at least 100 Diamond Back Terrapins many adults with juveniles. The Osprey are all working on their nests. We saw Blue Herons, hundreds of gulls, egrets, a pair of Oyster Catchers, Terns, Mergansers, Brant and numerous other species. One of the nice things about this time of year is the water where we run our tours is crystal clear affording great viewing of the activity below the water which yesterday included our first Horseshoe Crabs of the season. Here is a short clip of the birds and activity that we encountered in the salt marsh! On a rental on Monday we saw