Finally got our kayaks out for the first time this year (2017)! If you didn’t see our post/video on how we mount the kayaks on our truck roof, click here.
This pond caught us a bit off guard with the beauty of the rolling hills along the west bank. If I had know of this pond earlier we definitely would have kayaking here many times! We traveled to the pond thinking we would need to pay some entry fee to launch our kayaks. I don’t know if we just came at the right time of year, but we were able to use the pond and boat launch area for free. 🙂
As you can see in the picture above, if you take Short Woods Road off of 39, the boat launch area will be on your right shortly. We drove past that area originally because we saw a post online saying we had to launch from the beach area. A staff member at the state park told us to go ahead and launch from the boat launch area, so that is what we did. Worked out great and never heard any complaints.
The pond itself is about 2 and a half miles in length, so it is quite a bit bigger than any pond I had ever heard of. Back in Indiana we would definitely call this a lake. However, considering Squantz Pond is located next to a very long Candlewood Lake, I could see why they named it a pond in comparison.
We didn’t quite make it all the way around the pond, but if you made it a round trip it would be 5 miles of paddling. Depending on the weather, it could be a fairly easy paddle…or a bit more of a workout if going against the wind. In our situation, we were able to paddle very easily with the wind at our back going away from the state park. However, on the way back we had to continuously paddle otherwise the wind blew us backwards.
Most of the kayaking Deanna and I have done together was back when we lived in New York along the Hudson River. We hope to go back there soon and show you all the awesome kayaking it has to offer! Until then, places like Squantz Pond State Park are an excellent place to take the kayaks out for a spin.
Adventure On!
