Misery Island Family Paddle

August and September are the BEST months for paddling in the ocean. The water is finally warm enough that you don't have to have neoprene covering most of your body.

Yesterday was an exceptionally perfect day.  I wanted to take some of my family out to Great Misery Island in Salem Sound.  I had been out there a few weeks ago on an AMC trip, but I found a shorter, easier way to get out there and wanted to explore the larger island this time.  There were no clouds in the sky and the hardest part was going be to find a parking spot and launch site in Manchester-by-the-Sea.

Now here's the cool part.  I finally crossed the chasm of the techo-literate and am the owner of a smartphone.  What's cool about it are the interesting apps that actually do make life a little more interesting.  Case in point:  using the phone's GPS tracking to map our paddle adventure.

After driving around for 15 minutes, we found a great put-in at the boat ramp behind the police station in the center of town.

About an hour of paddling and we land at Great Misery Island.  It is managed by the Trustees of Reservations.  We joined this year, so figured why not check out all the cool places they hare.

This is the only picture we have of the 3 of us.  Unfortunately, I did not account for the delay in the camera to actually take the photo.

We found an actually bathroom on the island, then Betsy went exploring a nearby promontory.

Here's a view from the beach out toward the open water of Salem Sound.  Clear sky and calm waters.

The book I was using for a guide said this round-trip was 3.26 miles long.  I'm not sure what kind of miles these were, but certain not the kind used here in the US or by my smartphone.  See all the cool stats from our trip on my ViewRanger account.


I tried making the pictures a little bigger on this post.  Let me know if this size is too big.

See you on the water.