September 1, 2007
Can you believe, it's Labor Day Weekend already. Even though we haven't had any rain, Sue and I decided to paddle again. The weather is clear and should only go to the mid 70's with no humidity. Sounds perfect. For safe paddling, the Meshoppen river gage should read between 7 and 13 feet, and it read 7.7 feet. So we're just into the range. Bill drove us to Meshoppen and we launched by 7:45 am. There was still mist on the river because of the cool air and warm water. It was so pretty. It made me think of Walden's Pond.
Today is a very exciting one. At Meshoppen we are 233 miles from the end of the Susquehanna River, so the halfway mark of 222 miles is within today's reach. We wanted to be at least halfway by the end of this year. We will make it!!! Our day's goal is the West Falls Access or the Harding Access, both of which will bring us past halfway.
To get away from the Meshoppen Access, we had to walk our kayaks out into the deeper part of the river. Then we were on our way. It was fun paddling through the mist. We passed a couple of fishermen, watching one catch a bass. Beyond the Mehoopany Access is a Procter & Gamble paper products plant on the left hand side. We could hear machinery hum and see some steam coming out of a couple of stacks. It is a very large plant. The section of river from Mehoopany to Tunkhannock eleven and a half miles away is very familiar to Sue and I. Twenty years ago we entered an annual canoe race for a couple of years in a row here. Right behind P & G we walked the kayaks probably a half mile because we picked the wrong side of an island to go around.
We went through two more low areas before we got to an area we call “the doldrums”. It is a long narrow loop that covers almost six miles on the river. The water feels like glue, and one half of the loop always has head winds. Right before the doldrums we spotted four bald eagles playing in the air currents. I took a couple of pictures, but I'm sure the eagles will be too far away to be seen clearly. We saw a large group of about thirty Canadian geese with one white goose and its mate. Those two were the only geese with orange beaks. Maybe they were adopted by the Canadian geese. It seemed strange. We saw several boats in the doldrums area. There's nice deep water through there.
Less than a mile past the doldrums we hit the halfway point—222 miles! It was a great moment!!!
Two miles out of the doldrums, a train passed on the left side. They tooted their whistle and we waved. There are a lot of sections of river in New York and Pennsylvania that railroads follow alongside.
A mile or so before reaching Tunkhannock, there were scattered boulders in the water we had to go around. There were also some that were just under water that, if hit, could roll a kayak over. We had no mishap, but were very careful. We got to Tunkhannock Riverside Park Access just at noon and stopped and had lunch on shore. We were back in the water before 12:30.
I hadn't ever traveled the river past Tunkhannock, and Sue hadn't past Falls. Just past the Route 29 bridge in Tunkhannock we could watch small planes taking off from Skyhaven Airport. Bill is taking flying lessons there but I didn't think he was flying when we passed. About three miles from the bridge there were more boulders in the river. There were a lot of them and we had to paddle very slowly so we had time to maneuver around all of them. At times there just wasn't any open water at all. The water was so low that some islands that were shown on the map actually were connected to the shore.
The general direction of the Susquehanna River from Towanda to Tunkhannock is east, except for the loops in it. From Osterhout which is five miles down river from Tunkhannock, the river heads south. The wind was blowing at around 15 mph from the north, so a lot of the day we had tail wind. The combination of that and cooler temperatures made for a perfect day. From Osterhout to Falls, about six miles, probably 75% of the time we were going through boulder fields as we called them. One time I had looked ahead and the water didn't show any disturbance ( a sure sign of rocks just under the surface), so I stopped paddling to look at the map. All of a sudden I am stuck on the top edge of a giant rock slab that was underwater. I rocked back and forth a couple of times and finally tipped sideways over the lip of the rock. I wasn't constantly vigilant. But I was fine.
At the West Falls Access we found a porta john across the street and availed ourselves. It was 4:00 pm and we decided to go on to the Harding Access which was a little over five miles ahead. The tail wind continued! We came upon a couple of more boulder fields. One was real challenging because most of the boulders were just under water. That one was the toughest, I think.
About a mile up river from the Harding Access, there was a group of islands on the right, and we were afraid that the access was on the right of the islands, so we went along the skinnier side of the river and encountered very low water that we had to walk the kayaks through right at the end of the last island. The access was up further. We arrived at about 5:35 or so. Bill pulled in with the truck just after us. So we paddled 31 miles in a little under ten hours. We did well!
Harding Access is ten miles from Wilkes Barre. The maps say that safe paddling is when the gage at Wilkes Barre reads between 0 and 5 feet and it is at -0.02 feet with no rain in the forecast, so we will wait for higher water. If we get rain in early September we'll have another day or so, but if we don't get more rain we will start again next year. We have 202 miles to go.
