Sunday, August 26, 2007

August 25, 2007

August 25, 2007

Even though the Susquehanna is still very low, we decided to paddle another day. Since we finished up last time at our campsite, Bill and I stayed overnight Friday night and Sue met us up there at 7:00 am. After enjoying a few donuts and some coffee, we headed out. The weather was expected to be hot, so we had a lot of water with us.

The morning got warm quickly. We saw quite a few great blue herons and some merganser ducks and lots of kingfisher birds. The kingfishers are easily spotted because of their loud squawking noises. We only had two spots on the river before Wyalusing that we had to walk the kayaks through. Around seven miles from the campsite, we stopped at Endless Mountains Outfitters (EMO) in Sugar Run. We made a pit stop and visited with Melody Buck who, with her husband David, runs the outfitters. I also bought the majority of my equipment from them. David had a group of kayakers with him and they were paddling from Hornbrook County Park in North Towanda to Wysox with a stop in Towanda to participate in River Fest, a yearly event. EMO is located on the south side of the river opposite an island. With the low water, Sue and I had to walk our kayaks through some low water at the end of the island to get into the main river.

Soon after we left EMO, we saw four eagles of different ages. There was the distinctive white head and tail of an adult, and the other three were juveniles of different ages. I found this out after referring to my copy of “The Sibley Guide to Birds”. Juveniles don't have white heads or tails for the first three years. It's so good to see the eagles. The eagles were enjoying the updrafts from the river up the banks and ridges, just soaring as comfortably as ever. They were missing from the river's edge for so many years. I believe that they have been recently removed from the “Endangered List”. That's great!

Next on the river is a large bend that's about 6 miles long, and the area is called Quick's Bend. The water was like glue there. There was no breeze, and it was very hot. Two or three miles further was Laceyville. We saw two more bald eagles there. Sue and I decided that we didn't want the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that were packed. When we got to the boat access in town right next to the bridge, we called “Information” on our TracFone and got the number of the Wiser Choice Restaurant in town. We called and ordered cheeseburgers and fries and drinks. I walked up (literally) to Main Street and along the street to the restaurant. I struck up a conversation with a man sitting at the counter and he pointed out the thermometer which was reading 101 degrees outside. From talking to him, we found out that we knew each other. Twenty years ago he had sold my son Ken a car. Small world! Well, I have lived within thirty miles of Laceyville for the past twenty years. Sue has lived nearby probably for forty years. I brought the lunch back to Sue and the kayaks, and we decided to paddle and eat at the same time. We have aprons for the front of the cockpits, and Sue always uses hers because she burns easily in the sun and has to redo her SPF 50 often. I don't burn easily with SPF 15, so I hadn't used mine until lunch time. But it makes a nice table top for us while we paddle.

We had more low water at the downriver end of Laceyville. The cool water was refreshing on our feet. Paddling became difficult because of the heat. The humidity was high too, so we were sweating heavily and felt that we were expending so much energy. Our goal was Meshoppen, twenty-two miles from our campsite, or Mehoopany, three miles further.

Four miles downriver from the Laceyville access was the village of Black Walnut. I know some people who have a camp on the river there. We stopped in and had a nice visit with them in their air conditioned motor home. They also gave us a couple of glasses of water. They did mention that there was a weather warning for thunder showers in the evening. I think our enjoying the visit and the air conditioning was our downfall, though. When we got back out in the sun on the river, we felt exhausted.

Both Black Walnut and the next area called Myo Beach had a lot of houses and trailers along the left side of the river, so there was lots to look at. We saw people fishing and boating. Some were mowing lawns and others were weed whacking. There's limited use of motor boats because the river changes depth very often. Usually in front of the populated areas, there was deep enough water even during drought that a motor boat could get through. Most boats were used for fishing or just cruising around. We didn't see any water skiing or tubing, or even jet skis.

After Myo Beach we decided that if we could make it to Meshoppen, we could make it to Mehoopany. After all, it only meant three miles further! As we proceeded, we began doubting our decision. I felt like my face was radiating heat. And I could feel my heartbeat in my face. Sue was no better. So we called my husband Bill to pick us up at Meshoppen. We live only about twenty minutes from the boat access. We ended the trip at almost 4:00 pm. So the distance was only 22 miles. We had a nice social day—the first of our trips.

It was just as well that we got off the river when we did, because while we were loading the kayaks onto our truck, the sky got darker and there was a heavy wind coming from the Mehoopany direction. When we finished loading, we drove back up to our campsite in Homet's Ferry for Sue's car. When we got there it started to rain hard and there was thunder and lightning. My son Ken and his wife and son and daughter were there playing in the water, and they quickly got out. It was one of those storms where the sun was shining through the rain. It only lasted about fifteen minutes. Sue left, and Bill and I gathered up some stuff from Friday night and left. I couldn't wait to get home and take a long cool shower.

Sunday, August 5, 2007

August 4, 2007

August 4, 2007

It has been a whole month off the Susquehanna River. Sue and I both had other plans for four weekends in a row, but we're back! Our plan is to paddle for two days, staying overnight on an island somewhere at the halfway mark.

Bill and I stayed at our campsite in Homets Ferry where the kayaks were, and Sue met us Saturday morning there. Bill drove us up to Grippen Park in Endicott, NY and we launched at 9:00 am. For the weekend the daytime temperatures should be in the mid-eighties and there will be some humidity but no rain. The river is lower than before because there's been so little rain.

Very shortly after starting off, we watched a plane doing “touch and go” at a small airport. He would take off, circle the airport, and land on the runway, but then lift off immediately. We saw him “touch and go” four or five times before we paddled away from the area. Route 17, which is a four lane, 65 mph highway, followed the river for around ten miles, so we had traffic noise for hours. We did see several groups of mergansers and occasional great blue herons. We had to watch for changes on the surface of the water because large rocks were hiding just below. In some areas the river was so shallow that we couldn't paddle through. We had to wade, pulling the kayaks behind us. Sometimes we dragged them over river rocks. The kayaks were heavy, also, because we had packed for an overnight stay with sleeping bags, a tent, a tiny stove, a mess kit, food, etc.

At lunchtime we entered the Owego, NY area and would go under a bridge. The river was wide but so shallow that we climbed out several times to walk through low areas. In fact we walked under the bridge. Finally about a quarter mile past the bridge the river got deeper so we floated along and ate lunch. Sue had the small cooler mounted on the top of the back end of her kayak, held in place with bungee cords, and I had a plastic box with snacks located on the floor of my kayak right behind my seat. So we moved next to each other and got the food out. I was able to open the cooler and unload what we wanted. There was a slight downriver breeze, so we even floated in the right direction while we ate.

The maps from the 1980's stopped right after Owego so we felt like Lewis and Clark, not knowing anything about what was ahead. We had somewhere around ten or fifteen miles until we got to the Pennsylvania border. Actually it turned out to be a rather boring stretch of river—not a lot of twists and also not a lot of houses. Finally the river has turned from heading west to southwest. The hours passed and we still hadn't reached the border. We also had some head winds which slowed us down since the river didn't have much of a flow.

Our goal was to reach an island in Athens, PA that was privately owned but donated to the PA Department of Conservation and Natural Resources for use by paddlers. It had no amenities; it was just an island in the middle of the river. Our next choice was a campground in North Towanda right on the river that was about 12 miles past the island in Athens. I had bought new updated river maps of the North Branch Susquehanna River from Dave and Melody Buck who run Endless Mountains Outfitters in Sugar Run. They sell canoes and kayaks and all accessories, and they also rent kayaks and canoes and drive people to drop-off points so they can paddle down the river and back to the EMO site. The maps cover the river from the Pennsylvania border near Sayre, PA to Sunbury where the West Branch joins the North Branch. The maps are so informative. They show danger areas, boat access points, parks and campgrounds and their amenities, food locations, restroom locations, and much more. There are mile marks on the maps at each mile. There's even latitude and longitude shown.

When we finally got to the Pennsylvania border it was already 7:00 pm. There were lots of people standing in the river fishing. Sundown is a good time for that. We talked to some and they were catching small mouth bass. We saw more great blue heron and mergansers and an occasional egret. Since it would be getting dark soon, we decided that the island in Athens would be our stop. We had five miles to paddle. There was more interesting scenery because we went through Sayre and right into Athens.

We finally got to the island at almost 9:00. The kayaks were brought into the island somewhat so they weren't right on shore. The tent was set up higher up into the island on a flat spot that was covered with small, smooth river rocks. We both brought sleeping bag pads so the rocky spot was okay. Sue started heating water to reconstitute our dehydrated lasagna meal while I brought stuff into the tent. We had eaten, cleaned up, set up beds, washed up and gotten into bed by 10:00. Since the island is right down river from the Athens bridge right in town, we had lots of noise to contend with. Someone was playing music so loud that we could hear the words of the songs, and that went on until 2:00 am. There were fire truck horns, train rumblings, traffic noises and voices. I guess it wasn't too bad, though, because I couldn't hear any rustling in the bushes right outside the tent. We slept poorly and woke up feeling stiff from all the physical effort of Saturday.

After a breakfast of cold cereal and coffee and a sweet snack, we packed up and launched by 8:30 am. There was a mist on the surface of the river that was just rising and dissipating. We tried to get a picture of this mist, but it didn't show up. The paddling was very pleasant. The river goes through a slight gorge for a while so there was nothing much along the way except trees. We saw occasional houses built up on top of a ridge on the right side of the river. About 7 or 8 miles downriver we had reached the Ulster Bridge. In June of 2006 there was some major flooding in northeast Pennsylvania and the Ulster Bridge was damaged. We didn't know if we would have to portage around. When we got there, we pulled out at a boat access on the right side right next to the new bridge. We climbed up to the roadway and walked out on the new bridge to figure out how to get through. The bridge wasn't open yet. The cars were traveling on a temporary bridge. We saw that we would have to immediately paddle over to the other side of the river and follow that edge until the river got deeper.

The next town was Towanda. There was a small bridge, then a railroad bridge, and then a large bridge all within two miles. That area was also riddled with islands. It was very slow going because of gravel bars and low water. Several times we walked the kayaks. No sooner were we back in them paddling, then we were back out walking them. The river is very wide at the large bridge, and it was hard to figure out the best way through. We decided to stay in the middle.

Everything was going fine until about a quarter mile below the river Sue shouted to me, Don't go this way.” But I was directly behind her and had no choice. She was grounded on rocks and could not move. I passed slightly to her left and slipped by her and then saw that we were on a gravel bar and that I was going over the edge. There was a six inch drop that luckily took me into a pool of water. If I had gone over the edge into shallow water, I could have ended up nosed into the bottom of the river still stuck on the edge. I looked back and found that Sue's kayak had turned so it was parallel to the gravel bar edge. She climbed out and tried to move it. The water was very shallow, but also flowing very strongly over the edge. She couldn't move it. It tipped down on the upriver side and quickly filled with water. She started to bail and it again tipped and refilled. I pulled up to shore and ran upriver to where I could cross the deep pool area. In the meantime she somehow got her kayak over the edge and into the deep water. I was trying to walk toward her on the rocks in the flowing water, and she was trying to pull her kayak upriver in the deep water while walking along the edge of the bar. She couldn't pull the mostly submerged kayak against the current, so I told her to just let go of it. She did and we saw that it was moving toward shore where my kayak was. We scrambled upriver over the rocks to get to a shallow area to cross the deep pool to get to shore. Then Sue ran along the rocky shore and reached the kayak and pulled it onto some rocks. She then chased down her paddle which was a little further down the river by the shore. We do have a hand bilge pump, but left it home because we thought we wouldn't need it with the river being so low. We won't leave it home again! We used a cup and a one quart water bottle to bail the kayak. After bailing a little while we were able to pull it up further on shore and then tip it sideways to remove more water. We bailed, moved, and tipped several times until we were able to roll the kayak upside down on the rocks—after we removed the cooler. Once it was empty, we repacked the dry bags and cooler. She had a vinyl bag of things that could get wet, and that looked like a giant water balloon. So we drained it and repacked it also. We were on our way again.

Two miles downriver was a boat access in Wysox. Again, several places in that two miles we were walking the kayaks through low water. We also noticed that after that incident in Towanda, we really felt exhausted and our arms were sore. There was a seasonal snack shop a half mile walk from there. Sue volunteered to get us some hot dogs and drinks for our 3:00 lunch, and sat at a picnic table and watched the boats. We talked to some people there and ate. Our final goal was the campsite in Homet's Ferry where my husband Bill and I keep our camper for the summer. We looked on the map and realized it was twelve miles away. We figured the earliest we could arrive there was 8:00 pm. I called Bill and asked him if he would meet us there to help haul the kayaks up the beach and the 25 step stairway to the campsite. He said he would.

That twelve miles was an exhausting trip. The boat access in Towanda was not even out of sight, and already we were out of the kayaks because of low water. That happened several times along the way. We were exhausted. At one point Sue paddled right into the side of my kayak. She said she was in a resting trance and had her eyes closed. That's exhausted! Also, both of us had traveled that stretch of the river a couple of times previously so it wasn't new. Once a fish leaped out of the water and almost ended up in my kayak. That woke us up.

About two miles upriver from our campsite there was a large island and I told Sue I thought it was the one right before a boat access in Homet's Ferry. I said that we could go up the left side of the river. It should be deep enough, and the other side had very large boulders scattered around that didn't look very promising. Well, we ended up walking out kayaks about a half mile through low water. A lot of the time we literally dragged them over the rocks in the river. The water got a little deeper finally and we decided to try to paddle through it. While we were getting back into our kayaks we looked ahead downriver and saw three deer crossing from the island to shore. They were knee deep in water. We got in our kayaks anyhow and were able to paddle to the end of the island where we noticed that we were joining a very strong flow of water coming from the other side of the island. Maybe the other side of the island would have been better after getting past the boulders. Who knows!

The paddling the last two miles was easy. No shallows. After we turned the final bend before the campsite, we saw a light up ahead. Bill had put a light on shore at our trailer site! What a wonderful sight! We got out of our kayaks at 8:10 pm. It was a long day.

Sue and I decided that we're not getting back on the river until the water rises some. I don't know when that will be. Our goal for this year is halfway down the 444 mile length. According to the maps we have 255-1/2 miles to go. We plan to paddle at least to Tunkhannock, where Sue lives, which will bring us just past halfway. Now we wait for rain to raise the river.