Paddling the Chesapeake: Quiet Waters Park

Quiet Waters Park is located near Annapolis and is the place where I learned to kayak. The Park costs $5 to get in and yearly passes are available for $25. The Park is closed on Tuesdays. The parking lot is not located near the water access, but Amphibious Horizons rents kayaks from their dock and offers kayak lessons. Their webpage is being updated, so it is not currently available. To get to this location, I have edited the GPS coordinates I used in this map link, so that the endpoint is on a road in Google Maps. From the point indicated in this link to Google Maps, continue forward into the parking lot. At the end of the parking lot is a paved walking path to the kayak launch site (GPS 56° 56.162' W 76° 30.580').

The walk down the path is a bit long for carrying a kayak, so some extra wheels are useful. As the name suggests, Quiet Waters Park usually has calm water. During the summer, many boaters anchor in this area and go swimming. Quiet Waters Park does not allow swimming from the Park or the dog beach, but the water is fairly shallow in most areas.

I have included the map generated by my Garmin GPS of our 5 mile kayak trip around the Quite Waters Park. After we left the no wake zone, we were on the South River. We paddled away from the shore to reduce the effect of the waves reflecting off the shoreline. There were a few dogs swimming after tennis balls on the dog beach, and we paddled into Loden Pond. This is another calm region where I have often seen a heron or two, and once I even saw a fox sneaking along the shoreline. The fox must have been stalking something I did not see since there was a rustle of leaves in front of the fox, and the fox went away from the shoreline.

On our way back, the wind had picked up a bit, so we decided to take a break between the dog beach and Loden Pond. There were more waves on the South River, so we made sure to adjust our course to avoid having the waves hit us from the side (athwardship). The paddling back into Quiet Waters Park was smooth and having the waves and wind behind us made the last part easy. This was a great afternoon paddling trip where I have been many times.