The Sacramento Delta — Paddling the Sloughs, Locke & the Isleton Levee

South of the city the Sacramento River fans into the Delta, a thousand-mile maze of sloughs, tule islands, and levee roads reclaimed from tidal marsh by Chinese laborers in the nineteenth century. It is a landscape unlike anywhere else in California — flat, watery, and slow — and it makes for a wonderful active day of paddling and levee cycling within forty minutes of downtown. Kayaks slip out onto the glassy sloughs among great blue herons and river otters, the water so calm it mirrors the sky. On land the day threads two of the Delta's living time capsules: Locke, the only town in America built by and for the Chinese, and Isleton, whose false-front levee-top main street and cannery past earned it the name Little Paris of the Delta. Brannan Island's shaded picnic grounds and swimming beach round out a day defined by water, wind, and the long straight lines of the levee.