There are many places to go kayaking and canoeing in Alabama.

The Alabama Scenic River Trail

The Alabama Scenic River Trail is the nation’s longest one state river trail. There are over 1000 miles of accessible waterways.

The main waterways of the trail: The Alabama River, Coosa River, Tensaw River, Tennessee River, Cahaba River, Mobile-Tensaw delta, Terrapin, Hatchett Creek, Weogufka Creek. They offer access to big cities and small towns.

Guide books can be purchased on their website.

The Bartram Canoe Trail

The Bartram Canoe Trail is part of the Alabama Scenic River Trail and has many opportunities for kayaking & canoeing. There are day use paddling trails with many access points and overnight paddling trails.  Paddling is on the rivers, streams, lakes, sloughs, and bayous of the Delta.

Here is some information on the day use paddling trails:

The Globe Creek Trail

6.8 miles

Start: French’s Lake Coastal Access Kiosk

End: Hubbard’s Landing

Type of trail: creek, lake, and slough

Starting in the upper reaches of the Mobile-Tensaw Forever Wild Property. The trail begins in a small waterway that meanders through mature bottomland hardwood forests.

Red Hill Proctor Creek

Trail 6.5 miles

Start and End:Hubbards Landing

Type of Trail: Creek, lake, and slough

Crossing the open water of Tensaw Lake to small feeder creek – explore the remote backwaters.

Douglas Lake Trail

10.2 miles

Start and End: Upper Bryant’s Landing

Traveling up Tensaw Lake and into Douglas Lake.

Richardson Island Trail

10.2 miles

Start and End Rice Creek Landing

Follows Rice Creek, Brier Lake, and Tensaw Lake around Richardson Island.

Fisher Island Trail

8.9 miles

Start and End: Rice Creek Landing

Crossing Brier Land and the Tensaw River, the trail follows Bayou Jessamine into what is locally known as Jug Lake.

Indian Mound Island Trail

9.1 miles

Start and End Rice Creek Landing

Cross Brier Lake and Tensaw Lake. The trail follows the entire length of Bayou Jessamine into Bottle Creek.

Alabama State Parks 

There is also paddling opportunities at many Alabama State Parks.

Parks may require a fee or permit so check before you paddle.

Some State Parks may have canoe rentals.

 

Looking for kayaking & canoeing locations in your state?

Search our places to paddle page for places to kayak or canoe all over the U.S.  Kayaking & canoeing paddling locations are listed by U.S. State.

He’s the first paddler to complete the whole thing – 631 miles!

It took Ardie Olson from Cummings, Georgia just 12 days to kayak the entirety of the Alabama Scenic River Trail (ASRT). The trail is 631 miles and Ardie also had to cross six tough portages.

ASRT members donated $1,000 as prize money, which Ardie accepted at the end of his trip and then immediately donated back to the trail association. Ardie sounds like not just a great paddler, but a great person as well.

The crew here at BornToPaddle.com would like to join with all paddlers in congratulating Ardie! Great job!

Click here to find out more about the Alabama Scenic River Trail

Click here to find more places to paddle in Alabama

Have a favorite place to paddle or a story of a record-breaking paddle? Comment on this article or Click Here to use our Handy Contact Form and tell us all about it!

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More about Ardie’s journey:
Courtesy, Press Register
Click here to read the original article or just keep reading:

Georgia kayaker finishes 631-mile journey down the Alabama Scenic River Trail
Georgia man first to complete Alabama Scenic River Trail
Thursday, October 23, 2008
By RYAN DEZEMBER
Staff Reporter

GULF SHORES – With a stiff wind at his back, Ardie Olson paddled south from Weeks Bay, across the mouth of Bon Secour Bay and west along the Fort Morgan peninsula on Wednesday to complete a 12-day, 631-mile journey in which he became the first person to kayak the Alabama Scenic River Trail.

A 47-year-old from Cumming, Ga., with an interest in endurance sports, Olson said he was merely seeking a challenge.

To reward his accomplishment, however, the Alabama Scenic River Trail Association gave Olson $1,000.

Olson told tourism officials, who met him at Fort Morgan with a foamboard check, that he’d decided to donate the money back to the trail.

Waiting for his wife, Sherry, a lawyer who is also his boss, to pick him up, Olson gave little sign that he had been paddling a kayak from sunup to sundown for nearly two weeks, let alone that he’d been spending nights in the woods most of that time.

“I had plenty of food and six to eight hours of sleep a night,” he said. “Other than not having a bath in a week, I’m good.”

The Alabama Scenic River Trail is the longest single-state river trail in the nation. It follows seven rivers and two creeks, crosses nine lakes, encounters nine dams, cuts through the second-largest delta in the nation, hugs the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay and winds up at historic Fort Morgan on the cusp of the Gulf of Mexico.

Olson began his journey amidst autumnal hues in the southern piedmont and ended it gliding beneath wisps of Spanish moss, around cypress knees and past alligators in the subtropical environs of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta.

“It was nice to see the landscape change,” he said. “Sometimes, in the car, you go by and don’t notice that.”

Olson pushed off into Weiss Lake near the Georgia state line on Oct. 10. After a mere five days he had made it to Montgomery, about halfway through his journey. All told, he traveled at a clip of better than 52cm HALF miles a day.

Made of Kevlar, Olson’s 20-foot kayak weighs about 28 pounds and accommodated about 30 pounds of food, water and camping gear, he said.

And what sort of snacks does one pack for a 631-mile kayak trip?

“I’ve been eating Little Debbies, Rice Krispie treats and honey buns,” he said. “It seems odd, but they’ve got lots of calories, and that’s what I’m looking for.”

Aside from the blustery last day on the bay, Olson said his roughest moments came early on, when he had to carry his gear around one dam after another.

Highlights, he said, included passing through the three U.S. Corps of Engineers lock systems along the way, being immersed in total wilderness for days at a time, and a Delta stretch about 10 miles north of the bay that he found particularly accommodating to paddlers and rich with alligators, deer, hogs and bald eagles.

Have a favorite place to paddle or a story of a record-breaking paddle? Comment on this article or Click Here to use our Handy Contact Form and tell us all about it!