Thanks! Hopefully the info will come in useful to other boaters.
The historical imagery of google earth is pretty interesting to look at. Some of those stretches of river that seem to be just fine at normal or high water levels, may hide dangerous shoals or rapids just under the surface, which can be hazardous on a trip during lower water levels.
Not only do you see the fluctuations of river levels on the inland rivers, but you can also see dramatic changes along the coastlines. Particularly at inlets, and especially at inlets that do not have jetties, you can see the cut in the sandbar shift from year to year.
Sometimes, an inlet completely fills in, as was the case with "Mad Inlet" near the NC/SC border. When I was a kid, growing up in Cherry Grove in the 1980's, Mad Inlet existed, and you could cut through it on high tide, to get to the area known as "dead Backwater" behind Bird Island, but it was very dangerous. Imagery since about 1994 shows that inlet being gone.
It would really be awesome if you could roll back historical imagery for about 100 years to see all the dramatic changes, but sat. imagery only came into existence for purposes like google earth around the early 1990's.
