Ever since David & I bought kayaks in 2017, kayak camping has been on our bucket list. Kayak camping is when you throw all the camping gear into your boat, find a spot to set up for a few nights, and make do. It's kind of like backpacking, without the backpack and your trails are water. Deer Island on Philpott seemed like the perfect spot for our first attempt.

Philpott Lake is a reservoir in Southern Virginia (Bassett), with 2,900 acres and about 100 miles of shoreline. It's is about a 4.5 hour drive (hypothetically) from Northern Virginia. The lake was created by the Army Corps of Engineers to prevent flooding in the nearby Smith river. Previously we could never find the time, but with Covid-19, we were dealing with major cabin fever and had been forced to cancel all of our vacations. So, we rounded up our favorite camping buddies, the Singh family, and decided to just go for it.

David, Aiden, and I loaded up both of the kayaks (one single and a double) on top of our SUV and did our best to only take the necessary camping gear and basic food. Usually for us, camping means sumptuous meals and huge breakfasts involving bacon and fried Mcdonald's style potato patties, couple of bottles of wine, huge tents, bicycles, etc. This time we wanted to at least attempt to rough it. Our drive took over 7.5 hours due to various layovers, unscheduled work calls, and just going slow since we weren't used to driving with two huge kayaks on the roof. Luckily, the Singhs made the drive in about 4 hours and were able to secure two campsites, 4 & 5, next to each other. Even though you have to book the sites in advance, the specific sites cannot be reserved, they are first come first serve.

We threw out our "roughing it " idea and loaded up our motorized inflatable raft with all the camp gear and then also carried in more gear on the 4 kayaks. Between the two families, we had an inflatable motorized raft, 3 double kayaks, and a single kayak. 2 of the kayaks were inflatable and all were the sit in type. When you are loading up the gear, you have to keep a lookout for other boats, since all boats share the same ramp, but we had no issues and were able to take our time.

Deer Island is only about a 1/4 mile from the Salthouse Branch Park boat ramp, where we checked in at the gate. Each site is on the water, with lots of shade, and there are 2 or 3 pit toilets on the island, as well as potable water. Our sites were directly across from the boat ramp. Which meant that we could quickly kayak over to the mainland to use clean bathrooms and showers, brush our teeth, and pretty much avoid the pit toilets (so much for roughing it); though the pit toilets were not so bad in a hurry.

The campsites were really great with lots of shade. Ours had soft moss in the area where we hitched the tent so it was very comfortable. There was always a great breeze, but the boats going by made waves that made the water near the shoreline muddy. You also had to make sure to secure your kayak so that it didn't drift off. It was very relaxing to just hangout with your buddies and watch the boats, kayakers, and water skiers go by. We noticed that quite a few of the campsites had pontoon boats not kayaks, they clearly weren't roughing it either.

Deer Island has about 21 campsites mainly around the north side. Campsite 21 is very secluded ,as it was the furthest from the boat ramp, and it has its own pit toilet. Sites 8-14 has potable water and a shared pit toilet. With sites 4 & 5, we had to walk through another camp site to get to the toilet and water was not nearby. For this reason, next time we will look at a site around campsite 8. I'm sure we could easily have walk over to get water, we just never attempted it, since we had taken a big jug of water from home. Sites 15-20 also had a shared pit toilet and potable water and was further away from the boat slip and the mainland facilities. Even when Covid-19 regulations only allowed camping, the sites were not completely full. There were day trippers who came to swim near the Salthouse Boat ramp and they also used the bathrooms and showers there, but we never had to wait long to use the facilities. The check in gate had firewood available for purchase. We had to take all trash out of the campsite area as there were no trash cans on the island.

We spent two nights enjoying some great food, including hot dogs, chili for dinner, and pancakes for breakfast. We spent the day exploring with our kayaks. The blueway is a series of water trails at the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains in Philpott lake. Apparently, there are waterfalls and a mill that was flooded over when the dam was created. I had dreams of checking out all the various nooks and cranies at the lake. David convinced me to just stick to a few miles of kayaking and that was a good choice.

After kayaking to the Philpott dam, we found a deserted island called Turkey Island and settled in to eat a picnic of cherries, salami, and cheese. We played in the water and enjoyed the views. There were lots of motorized boats and pontoon boats on the water, which created some nice waves to swim around. Though the water would get muddy near the shoreline, towards the center of the lake it was beautiful and you could tell from the water color that it was very deep in some spots. We kayaked some more and went back to our campsite to laze around and spent the afternoon swimming in front of our campsite, played scattergories, and made up a new game involving 80s song lyrics. David painted. Aiden fished in any form he could think up--standing by the lake , while kayaking, standing in the water, possibly while swimming also. He indulged his favorite pastime of checking out every rock and chilled in the water with Jastirath and Harkiran. Harkiran spent time drawing everything that amused her. We had some great discussions with Jastirath , sometimes about food, other times about world events. At least one topic was about presidents and slavery which spoke to all the protests that were occurring at the time. Kudos to Supreet for the amazing meals and being always ready for an adventure. Jaspreet amazed us by just being willing to play along. Even though he couldn't swim, he was a great sport. If I couldn't swim, you will not find me anywhere near a kayak.

We felt that perhaps they should rename deer Island and call it Snake Island instead. Quite a few of the other guests and the rangers felt compelled to warn us about copperheads in the water and near the campsites, which set me constantly on guard; however, we were lucky and did not spot a single snake, poisonous or otherwise.

We hope to one day return and check out more of the blueway, as well as the various hiking trails at the Philpott Lake area. We ended the trip with some good BBQ in Lynchburg (Small Batch BBQ), which was enjoyed picnic style at the Lazy Days winery in Amherst (not the best VA wine in my opinion). We also continued our tradition of finding great local homemade ice cream , this time at the Homestead Creamery, before heading home.

July, 2020

https://www.virginia.org/listings/PlacesToStay/CampingatPhilpottLake/

https://www.saw.usace.army.mil/Portals/59/docs/recreation/philpottlake/Recreation/Recreation%20Areas/Deer%20Island%20Brochure%202012.pdf