ALLIGATOR RIVER
The Alligator River drains a large, wild area of northeastern North Carolina before emptying into Roanoke Sound. On the map, it definitely looked like a place worth visiting. To add to the attraction, Red Wolves were reintroduced in the area a few years ago. With the wolves now established, I'm guessing that the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge is the only place in the world that can claim Alligators, Bears, and Wolves. I could be wrong, but if so, I can't think of another place that does.
We got up early on Friday morning. The previous night's storm had mostly passed, leaving only overcast skies and a little drizzle. We left Nags Head and began the long drive back to Charlotte. We passed Manteo on the new bypass, which consists mainly of a LONG, impressive bridge over the sound. Once we reached the mainland, it didn't take long to arrive at the turn for Buffalo City Road. We followed it to its end at a canoe put-in at Milltail Creek. Our plan was to follow a route in Ferguson's guidebook. He suggested a 4 mile paddle to Sawyer Lake, which was perfect since we only had a couple of hours.
We put in at 8 AM and followed red markers up a narrow channel. To our right was some high ground with a footpath, while swamp was on the left. It didn't take long to reach our first point of confusion. We reached a fork in the channel, with a red marker and arrow pointing helpfully back the way we had come. There was no indication of which we should go to continue on the route. This turned out to be a common problem in the refuge. Either markers were missing or they were obviously wrong. One marker pointed off into the woods. Another pointed up into the sky. It was apparent that we were on our own. Unfortunately, the map scale was too small to be useful. I guessed left, which turned out to be correct.
We paddled for a few minutes and reached another unmarked fork. Here though we could see that Sawyer Lake was off to the left. We paddled that way and entered a beautiful lake. The shores are heavily wooded, to the extent that it seemed almost like a mountain lake. There was no sign of another person. As we paddled farther into the lake, I was overcome with a true sense of wilderness. I've been to a lot of remote places, in the Rockies and the canyons of Utah, but I don't think that any of those locations seemed any more wild than Sawyer Lake.
We paddled to the far end of the lake enjoying the quiet. Here was found a large stand of Atlantic White Cedar. Well, the guidebook said we did, anyway. To be honest, I wouldn't know an Atlantic White Cedar from a Pine if it fell on me. Let's just say the trees were very nice and leave it at that.
We reached the end of Sawyer Lake and paddled back. We reached the area where we first entered the lake. Instead of turning right to return by the same route, we paddled ahead, once again without the reassurance of route markers. Eventually we found one though, and continued on the red route to a low water bridge. Here the foot trail from the parking lot crosses Sandy Ridge Gut. The water was up, so there was no hope of floating under. We made an easy portage by dragging the canoe over the trail. We put back in and paddled through perhaps the prettiest part of the route. The swamp was beautiful and the channel remained very narrow. Fortunately, the route was clear of fallen trees.
Our side stream eventually spilled out into Milltail Creek. This is a huge body of water that really looks more like a lake. I imagine it gets some power boat use from time to time, but we saw nobody this morning. It was a windy day, so we stayed close to shore. We paddled back to a marked side stream on the right. We followed this under a bridge and back to the take out.
As we approached the take out, I heard a loud BANG. I almost jumped out of the boat. We hadn't heard anything louder than turtles plopping into the water in 2 hours. We reached the parking area, and discovered the source of the noise. 2 other paddlers had just arrived, and the noise was the door on the porta-potty. We got out and wished them a good trip.
As we drove out, we reflected on how we hadn't seen any exciting wildlife. We'd seen the usual birds and turtles, but no bears, alligators, or wolves. Then, I spotted something odd in the road ahead of us. We approached, and two river otters ran out of the road and jumped into the creek next to us. This was the best look that I'd ever had of river otters in the wild. It was the perfect exclamation point to a great trip.
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