Kayaking @Neoponset River

We went kayaking in Massachusetts. Since this day the weather forecast was shower in the White mountain area, we chose to stay in Mass and did a small kayak.
Neoponset river is just 30 minutes drive from Boston. So we could sleep in. To go to the Whites we need to get up at 3:30 a.m.
Sleeping in, Mr.N had blueberry pancake as a stereotypical American, I ate rice and natto with green onion with fish as stereotypical Japanese, we went out for river. 

The launching area was a bit tricky. First of all, this area is poison ivy habitat, which concerned me. Indeed Mr.N found some poison ivy. I was very careful not to touch any plants to be safe. 

The river is nice. Both sides are full of lush green leafy trees. Those green reflect on the water and everything was shining in green, which was pretty. Summery view in Mass. At the same time tough part was that the river is very shallow and sometimes too shallow to kayak. Another challenge was many dead trees were floating in the river and avoiding them without making damage on kayak. In fact after 2 miles we had to turn around, because all the river was blocked by dead trees with many branches. 

Dead logs was a hardship, however, that brought fun as well. A lot of turtles were soaking up sun on those logs! We saw from big ones to small ones. Fun fact: sometimes small one is sitting on a big one. Once I saw a bit one trying to climb on a small one....poor tiny one.  

One of them was the highlight of this kayaking. A very small one was enjoying sun on the old tire (somehow abandoned in the river). Usually when a kayak is approaching, turtles are jumping into water and immediately disappear. This tiny turtle, somehow, not really scared, and it went into water at last minutes. In the water it was not scared much and just floating around near the tire. It is not common for kayakers to spot swimming turtles, but this time we enjoyed observing small turtle swimming. Its head was in the water for a couple of seconds, then come up above water to breathe. As we left I looked back and saw the turtle came back on the tire. The turtle seemed to fond of the tire very much. Cute!

Although this river had some difficulty, it was nice to see this cute one.