Spice Creek small boat Traditional Geocache
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(regular)
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...Accessible by small boat (canoe, kayak) only!...neither permissible nor possible to reach on foot. The geocache is on public land used for waterfowl hunting, so don’t visit here Monday to Saturday during either: 1) the first half of September (resident geese season), or 2) duck season (usually the second full week in October plus Nov. 1 through about Jan. 20.) A normal low tide makes this site inaccessible; check tides at weatherforyou.com/reports/index.php?forecast=tides&alt=tides&locid=962 (Lower Marlboro.) Steady, strong winds out of the north or northwest will surely make this site inaccessible at or even near low tide.
The best launch site is on the Prince George's Co. side in Nottingham (Nottingham Rd.) at the Patuxent Riverkeeper HQ ($5 donation to launch unless a PaxRiverkeeper.org member.) Short carry. Alternately, a put-in in Calvert County is at the small dirt parking lot and sign at the very end of Ferry Landing Road (leading off of Rt. 4 in Dunkirk.) But here you have to carry your kayak/canoe 330 yards down the dirt road, then turn right downhill on another dirt road for an additional 175 yards (to the Ferry Landing (1788; pilings, old road still visible) (this is a little before you hit the area where deer hunting is allowed.) From there it’s a 3.5 mile round-trip paddle to the cache, just a half mile shorter than from the PaxRiverkeeper.
There was a drowning in 2001 in this very stretch of the Patuxent, even though from either put-in you would never get more than 300 yards from the shore. So wear life jackets and wear proper wet suits and carry other safety gear if the water temperature is cold, like it is from Nov. to May. This is one of the best mid-Patuxent areas for bald eagles...look for them on the high bluffs southward from Ferry Landing, as well as deer, beaver, muskrat, and the elusive otter in the marshes. Many osprey from March to September. Nearby Hall Creek in Calvert County is one of the best kayaking/canoeing creeks around, adding up to 8 miles round trip however.
(If you follow the correct tidal creeks at a favorable wind high tide October to May, you can get to within a tantalizing 50 feet of the nearby Spice Creek North geocache, just 350 yards from this cache. But 30 of those feet involves slogging through a marsh/beaver pond on foot....so be prepared to get wet if you try for that one by boat rather than by land.)
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