Google predicts that the Oak Donnick access to the St. Francis Sunken Lands is about ½ hour farther from the Benjamin Hooks Library than the Wapanocca WMA. I think today’s participants agree it’s worth the extra drive. There’s plenty of parking close to the launch ramp and there is far more open, shaded cypress stand to paddle. We encountered a few duck hunters and a couple of fish and game officers leaving the launch as we arrived and a couple of fishermen as we left. However, we were the principal users. It wasn’t congested, everyone was friendly, the other users were not a factor in our paddling. In fact. one of them helped during the take-out.
Currently, there is no marked trail nor channel, but there’s no danger of getting lost. We mostly just paddled in the trees and kept the main body of water in sight. Here’s our GPS track. The black and white dotted is what we did 09/21/2019. The light gray track in the background is from longer paddle to Stephen’s Landing, a second access point on 06/17/2018.
The weather was beautiful, cooler than the last few days in Memphis and breezy in the few places we needed to traverse open water. The river stage was 10.26 on the Oak Donnick Gauge. That is the lowest stage I have paddled the area to date. We bumped cypress knees here and there. It wasn’t a problem but might be at a lower stage. That said, the river stage made it very pleasant paddling below the tree branches “in the woods”. The pace was relaxed, we covered slightly more than 5 miles in 2 ½ hours.
We stopped at the Shake Shack for lunch on the way back. It’s a totally new larger building built in only 3 weeks and opened June 6th. The hospitality, shakes and hamburgers are still great.