Steve....wow....I envy/admire you for your close-to-home adventures. And I agree, one doesn't need to travel far to have fun. Even "creek-walking" for miles starting out one's own back door can be a wild adventure....of course, local trespassing laws may apply. According to our local DNR, if you stay "on top of the water or floating on the water" you are not trespassing, which means, I suppose if you walk on the ice, it's ok or float in something.
Once when we creek-walked, we ran into a swarm (or whatever lots of these things are called) of water moccasins, huge snapping turtles, and over creek pulley slides.