Friends of the John Smith Chesapeake Trail
Cape Charles 2
Going South
After an easy launch from the town beach, you just keep the shoreline on your left, and head south for an hour or less to the broad mouth of Old Plantation Creek. The old and the new mix here. An 18-hole Arnold Palmer signature golf course commands the northern side of the creek entrance. Not far inside, on the southern shore, you can put in at a small boat ramp and explore the ancestral homesite and cemetery of the family of Martha Custis, George Washington's wife. Custis is still a common name in these parts.
Entering Old Plantation Creek--indeed all paddling in this region--can be a challenge if the tide is low. There are numerous sandbars, and finding navigable water, even in a kayak or canoe, can require standing up to reconnoiter the way through acres of shoals that shift constantly with storms and currents.
In marked contrast to the marshy, muddy upper Chesapeake, the lower estuary is marked by beaches, high bluffs, offshore sand ridges and dunes that soar to 80 feet high. Atlantic tides bring in massive amounts of sand, whose heavy particles settle out before reaching far up the estuary. It's a good bet that Smith, who was searching for a passage to the riches of the Orient, didn't linger long here because his 30-foot shallop would have constantly run aground.
In recent years, riches have been discovered in the form of clam aquaculture, now a larger source of income than agriculture on the Virginia Eastern Shore. The strong tides and clean ocean water, combined with firm sand bottoms, make Old Plantation Creek a perfect home to millions of farmed clams. PVC pipes mark clam beds, and you'll frequently see swirling, 30-40 pound cownose rays drawn here to feed on the shellfish, but mostly frustrated by the plastic netting that covers them.
Past its mouth, Old Plantation Creek's channel turns more navigable and straightforward, moving between forested banks and fringing wetlands that harbor a variety of feeding herons, egrets, ospreys, eagles and terns. Black skimmers glide just above the surface, etching delicate wakes with their extended lower bills as they scoop plankton. The creek is also a worthy place to cast bait or artificials for speckled trout. Paddlers can easily spend a couple hours exploring the creek to its head before returning to Cape Charles.
While Old Plantation Creek is sheltered from the wind, the trip south from here to the cape at the very end of the Eastern Shore (also named Cape Charles) is big water, with a fetch of some 20 miles to the western Shore. On clear days you will see the 22 mile bridge-tunnel crossing the Bay's mouth as you paddle south.