Trips
The University of Washington Arboretum is justifiably famous for being a beautiful slice of nature right in the heart of Seattle. In addition to being able to hike along its well maintained paths, you can also paddle through the waterways that surround the nearby islands and through the pathways that cut through the aquatic vegetation. Unfortunately, SR-520 is always close at hand and the recent construction on the floating bridge has made getting to the arboretum tricky at best. Fortunately, it appears that they've relaxed their restrictions on launching small boats from the arboretum itself, so it's relatively easy to go for a trip. For those that don't own their own boats, the UW Waterfront Activites Center (or WAC) is just across the (incredibly busy) ship canal and they rent kayaks and canoes to the general public. The Aqua Verde Paddle Club isn't much farther away and they also rent out kayaks.
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Pros: Stunningly beautiful with plenty of places to explore. If you do get bored, you have all of Lake Washington as well. There's lots of wildlife, including heron, turtles, and eagles not to mention lots of beautiful plantlife. Plenty of free parking with several water access points and close to just about everywhere in Seattle.
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Cons: The steady drone of SR-520 is an ever present background hum, if it isn't so loud you can barely hear yourself think. Also, this place isn't exactly a hidden gem and can get very crowded on summer weekends. There are a few places where you have to seriously duck your head to get under a bridge and you need to look out for snags and fallen logs in some of the smaller waterways.
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Overall: Bar none, my favorite place to paddle in Seattle. The freeway noise is annoying, but the sheer variety of places to go and things to see just blow every other place out of the water. So to speak.
5/15/18
Long time readers of this site will know that I've been trying to find a way to paddle around the arboretum for some time. I have fond memories of renting canoes from the WAC and frantically paddling across the ship canal as some power yacht tried to run us over, but then finally reaching the lush islands of the arboretum. Once I got my own boat, I wanted to head there immediately. Unfortunately, I overestimated my own stamina, was thwarted by construction on 520, or any one of several other things. Mostly, I was thwarted by the arboretum's website which said that there was no boat launching from the arboretum itself.
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Well, after checking several other paddling sites, I decided that they weren't being scofflaws and that the arboretum's website was either out of date or just poorly worded. If I was wrong, there were plenty of other nearby places to launch from. Judging by the number of kayaks I saw being launched and the signage all around, I was right.
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I parked in parking lot #14, which seems to be the closest to an actual place to launch, although the water didn't seem particularly inviting as it was awfully brown and had a pair of someone's discarded tube socks floating in it. Still, once I was on the water, it was just as I remembered it. I paddled around for a couple hours, exploring a couple narrow channels and marveling at the wildlife. There were more turtles than I'd ever seen in one place before, not to mention the family of ducks, several heron, and, at the end, some fish that I would have loved to have gotten a picture of. Allow me to explain.
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Near the end of my trip, I was in a rather shallow cove like area with many lily pads dotting it's surface. There was nothing remarkable about it, but every so often I'd see a big splash, or catch movement in the water out of the corner of my eye. Then I saw the fish. It was at least a foot and a half long and just sort of lazily swimming around, until it saw my kayak, at which point it simply vanished, kicking up mud from the bottom to cover its escape. I pulled out my camera hoping to see another, but didn't, so I put the camera away thinking I was just lucky to have seen it. At which point another swam by. Needless to say, I got my camera out again and half paddled, half drifted through the water, but the fish kept hidden. By this point I was getting pretty hungry, so I gave up, put my camera down, and started paddling. Which is when I saw...well, I'm not quite sure.
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There were at least three of these giant fish, all swimming together, as if they were one giant fish and right near the surface. And they were moving fast, so fast they nearly ran into my kayak. But just before they did, they split apart and all swam off in different directions, never to be seen again. My guess is that it's about 50-50 whether they were fighting or mating. I did see one more fish, when I was taking underwater pictures of some lily pads. It swam right past my camera. Needless to say I was incredibly excited and snapped as many pictures as I could. Unfortunately, the water was so cloudy that the lily pads didn't even show up, much less the fish. The only picture I got was of a dead one so that I could identify the fish later, and I'll spare you that one. (As far as I can tell they're large mouthed bass.)
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So that's about it. I eventually made it back to my starting point, packed things up, and headed out. A great day, I'll definitely be back.
The pathway from the parking lot down to the launch point. It's shorter than it looks.
Their signs could use replacing.
Heading out from the launch point. It's pretty swampy here.
Another potential landing site, although it's probably more use to those walking along the island trail.
It's not very long before you see the freeway. You can hear it long before this, though.
This kinda sums the situation up.
Just past the freeway you can see Husky Stadium and the main UW campus.
A mama duck and her babies.
There were turtles.