This article was originally written by Laura Scharle (Creator of Delmarva Trails & Waterways) for the Delmarva Courier newspaper.
The southern end of Worcester County does not get enough credit. I’ve spent almost my whole life living in Maryland but until I moved to Worcester, I had never even heard of the towns of Pocomoke City or Snow Hill, let alone the villages of Girdletree and Stockton. But now that I’ve spent time hiking the EA Vaughn Wildlife Area and paddling Chincoteague Bay, southern Worcester County needs to be on every outdoorsman’s bucket list.
For those that follow this column, you may recall the article that my counterpart, Ralph Ferrusi, wrote about hiking the EA Vaughn Wildlife Area back in March. While he thoroughly covered visiting by land, I recently got the chance to visit by water.
After the remnants of Hurricane Debby passed through our area, the weather cleared up into perfect paddling conditions. Not too hot, clear skies, and super calm winds. I chose to launch from Taylor Landing, located just east of Girdletree on Chincoteague Bay. At the landing, there is something rare - a water trails map! There are very few official water trails in Worcester County, but this is one of them. I had launched here before with my family to go clamming and paddle around Mills Island, but I had never before explored the creeks that lead inland from the bay.
I set out with hopes to paddle the Pikes Creek trail, a seemingly narrow, super windy creek with lots of twists and turns through the marsh. Please note that although these are water trails marked on a map, there is no signage along the trails. I paddled south along the edges of the marsh for about 1.5 miles to where the mouth of the creek would be - or rather, should have been, based on the trail map. Luckily I only had to backtrack about a half mile to find the true entrance to Pikes Creek and once I got in the creek, it was stunning. Terrapins popped their heads above the water, green herons soared overhead, and a bobwhite called in the distance. Conditions were so calm that the pinkish-blue early morning skies reflected perfectly on the creek, even though it was only a few yards wide.
I was paddling close to low tide though, and I had to cut my exploration of Pikes Creek short, as one section was too shallow to navigate. I then decided to head back and explore Scarboro Creek instead. Scarboro is much wider and is about 2 miles long, but it is still quite shallow, and I was only able to paddle about 1.5 miles before I had to turn around. But the creek was still packed with wildlife - double crested cormorants, great egrets, great blue heron, willets, and even more green heron were enjoying the creek right alongside me. I didn’t spot any turtles in Scarboro Creek, but there were a few splashes and wakes created by something - I’m assuming fish - just beneath the water’s surface.
I also noticed some PVC pipes in the wetland grasses, which, after a little investigating through the Maryland Coastal Bays Program, were from some prior PhD research on marsh elevations. And another PVC pipe on the very edge of the marsh turned out to be a data logger measuring water levels. It was very cool to see that scientific condition monitoring happens even in the most remote place like this.
Another unique thing about the mouth of Scarboro Creek is that there’s an oyster farm lease! I’ve done a lot of work promoting oyster farming for VirginiaWaterTrails.org and I was thrilled to see this in my home state.
After about 2.5 hours of exploring, I had to head back to the ramp and return back to the real world. But I will definitely be back on another day - at high tide - to see the rest of Pikes Creek.