Escaping the brutal heat and humidity of Summer while also avoiding tourist traffic proves to be rather challenging in Delaware. Never fear, The Buckit Blog has a few tricks up our sleeve! We are fortunate to have some beautiful waterways in Northern DE with crystal clear, cool water. Creek play is one of the very best ways to enjoy the outdoors in the Summer in a totally different way. We visited White Clay Creek early in the morning and parked at the Chambers Rock lot. The driving address if you’re using a GPS is 851 Chambers Rock Rd. Newark, DE. The creek beach is only a short walk from the parking lot and since I was heavily pregnant on this adventure, the only hikes I was up for were short ones. That being said, you can make the hike a loop by taking the Nature Preserve Trail to the Penndel trail which looks to be about 2 miles round trip back to the parking area if you are looking for a longer walk. The path to the “beach” was a bit grown up and you can easily pass by it, so here is a little map to show exactly where it is:
To give you an idea of what to expect, the deepest areas in the creek came up to about the bottom of my shorts so it is enough to swim in if your kids want to, but most of it is just wading and splashing depth. Water shoes or old sneakers are key as the rocks can be quite slippery and the shoes will protect your feet and give you the traction you need. We walked up the creek one way until it wasn’t easily passable and then we walked the other way until we came up to what looked to be the remains of an old railroad bridge.
Along the way we came across tons of fun nature finds including but not limited to: a snake, wildflowers, fish in their underwater nests, beautiful dragonflies, butterflies and little freshwater clams. The boys especially loved collecting the little clam shells and traversing natural obstacles.
My kids tend to get bored easily while adventuring and there wasn’t one moment of boredom or whining while we enjoyed this natural water play day. This was easily one of our BEST Summer 2018 adventures.
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