Paddling near New Smyrna Beach, FL

New Smyrna Beach occupies a barrier island in Volusia County with 17 miles of coastline and a dense lattice of canals and tidal back-channels a mile west of the surf. Paddlers thread red-mangrove creeks and marked blueways off the Indian River Lagoon, push south into the largely undeveloped redfish flats of Mosquito Lagoon inside Canaveral National Seashore, and trace the blackwater of Spruce Creek, an Outstanding Florida Waterway running toward Strickland Bay.