Travel Writers Bill & Mary Burnham

We launched from Kelley Park in Ballston Spa, Bill's hometown in Upstate New York. Bill and his brother and sisters played on the Kayaderosseras growing up, making this six-mile paddle downstream to Lake Lonely a nostolgic one. We paddled fiberglass Lettman Mark IV and V kayaks (slalom models designed by the 1972 Olympian), handmade by Ruth and Norm Dibelius in the 1970s and still in great shape.

Recent heavy rains gave the lower Kayaderosseras a springtime feel, full of fun, easy runs.

Old willows lean over a quiet pool. Log jams and shoaling form small islands and backwaters on the lower Kayaderosseras. In this pool, crayfish dart to and fro, rippling a perfect reflection of trees and sky.

Log jams and strainers make for great fishing, and keep paddlers on their toes. This blowdown spanned the creek and forced us up a muddy stream bank for our only portage of the day.

A picture perfect beaver dam crosses the Morning Kill near its confluence with Kayaderosseras Creek. Above this dam, the wetland-like Morning Kill is glass smooth across a wide valley spiked with dead-standing trees and blanketed with grasses and purple lilly pad flowers.

Aquatic vegetation grows rampant below the Morning Kill beaver dam.

Farmfields and woodland line the lower Kayaderosseras shores until it passes under busy Route 9 and Interstate 87/The Adirondack Northway. Here deep and wide, the creek takes on the persona of a "lazy river."

Along the Lake Lonely outlet stream stands a rich ecosystem of woods and wetland that, in the height of summer, feels like a southern swamp in its green lushness.

A small marina below Lake Lonely marked the end of our trip -- and elicited a vow that we'd return to explore the wide wetlands that spread between the lake and Kayaderosseras Creek.