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To the Onlsow County Commisioners:
A wonderful paddling experience exists on Cartwheel Creek. This is what we have been doing on several trips on Northeast Creek that we wrote you about. We cannot do this alone. We need your help to make Onslow streams clear and free running as nature made them. This will add tremendous value to them for Onslow County.
JR Batchelor has been doing this in past years. We need him and his crew to do his usual good job on this Cartwheel Creek and finish clearing the creek. We cut through just enough to get our canoe thru. We did this with one man on a chain saw and the three of us also had hand brush cutters.
Also, Jones and Carteret Counties have received Grant money to do this. Onslow should be able to do the same.
Barring more hurricanes we and the local residents can keep it clean for the occasional trees which may fall across the creek.
Please find a way for JR Batchelor and his crew to make all Onlsow County Streams free running and navigable by canoe and kayaks. He does do an excellent job as we have enjoyed paddling after him on many of our rivers.
Property owners and appreciate what we have done here very much.)
We launched our boats in Cartwheel Creek at Walnut Landing in Walnut Landing Sudivision off Swansboro Loop Road at 11:00 AM. We worked our way upstream and arrived at Swansboro Loop Road at 3:00PM.
Our return trip downstream took 25 minutes!
This was a labor of love and an expression of thanks and appreciation for the use of their access to this lovely creek which enabled us in previous trips to paddle downstream to Mill Holland Creek and on to the White Oak River. Now they can paddle upstream too. We hope they can improve on what we did today as they do this.
We can now launch our canoes and kayaks at Swansboro Loop Road thus giving paddlers a public access to The White Oak River. The new Stella Bridge has closed off our public access there so this is now the only public access in Onslow County to The White Oak River from Swansboro to Gibson Bridge which is the first bridge above Maysville.
More work needs to be done. What we did today shows it will be an excellent canoe trail when fully cleared of all snaggs. Onslow County could do this at very little cost as they have done on many other streams in the past for mosquitoe control to make a clear flowing creek. This also makes a usable creek for paddlers to navigate.
Grants Creek and Starkys Creek are two creeks that can also be cleared to provide paddlers with public access to the White Oak. Many more creeks in Onslow County could be usable if cleared this way.
Tha participants were Ed Gruca of Emerald Isle, Dale Weston of Jacksonville and Elmer Eddy of Swansboro. Pictures are by Ed Gruca. They tell the story. Dale and I had the good luck to see a pileated woodpecker but Ed was not there to get a picture. Elmer Eddy, The White Oak River Trashman
Stewards of The White Oak River Basin
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