DHL Illwill Creek

Last night’s low was 51, followed by another sunny day that made it up to 82, with a light breeze. We pulled anchors at 830am, and dropped them again around 12:30pm. Today we came up Illwill Creek, exploring the coves off of it. My first find of day was some big red circular object. I have no idea what it is. If anyone knows, please let me know. (It’s one of the first photos.) We are seeing a lot of Loons, but they are hard to get close enough to get good photos. As soon as you head towards them, they dive under water. A couple coves we entered, had some really nice A-Frames and homes. One peninsula between the coves even had its own street light! We passed the Wisdom Resort Marina, which pretty much took up most of the point it was on. Sadly, it appeared they have a lot of junk spread out along the shore downstream of their main facilities. That’s one thing that is very apparent on this lake. The amount of garbage along the shoreline. And apparently some of the marinas just leave their damaged docks along the shores nearby. Buoys break free during storms, but usually you don’t see as many beached as I’ve seen here. A lot of Styrofoam and dock floating material is along the shoreline as well. Since the lake is mostly undeveloped except for marinas, most this waste comes from the marinas! Plastic buckets, life jackets, bottles, tires, etc, all trashing up the shoreline. This stuff most likely comes from the people using the lake! Almost like the lake is used as a dumping grounds around the shore. And then when the water is at winter pool, as it is still low now, all that stuff surfaces. We continued upstream past the Wisdom docks, and finally anchored at the end of Illwill Creek . Before anchoring, I started up Howards Creek, but couldn’t get very far, so turned around and joined Bill a short distance away still on Illwill. After settling in and having lunch, Bill got in his Kaboat and I got on my kayak, to explore the area. We went up the Sexton Fork at the end of Illwill Creek, the short distance, until it became a small shallow stream. Then turned around, and went up Hogback Creek a short distance until it became just a small shallow stream. I had already peddled close to 2.5 miles on my kayak, so called it a day and went back to my boat. Bill Kaboated up Howards Creek as far as he could get, and then returned. This evening we were serenaded by the frogs.Read more