This next week all three of us are on vacation. Last night we drove to Liverpool, PA with our truck and camper, our dog, our kayaks, etc. Today my husband drove us north to Hummels Wharf which is five miles below Shikellamy State Park. We avoided the Shamokin Dam and the power plant dam a mile or so below it. We started out at around 8:45 with a weather forecast of mid 90's and humid without any rain or storms. We began with light headwinds and still water. The river was relatively open with some islands, getting wider as we went. We ate packed lunch in our kayaks while floating downriver very slowly. After lunch we came into more rocks and some rock shelves that extended the width of the river. It was tricky finding the deepest part to cross the shelves.
We noticed that there was very little erosion and not much debris in trees from high water in the past. BUT, we did pass what was left of a deer carcass eight or ten feet above the water stuck in branches of a tree. We noticed two legs, some skin, and maybe part of a head. We decided it either died in flooding and its body got stuck up in the tree or hunters shot it and stripped the meat off, discarding it near the river.
We saw our first turtle today—first of the year. There seems to be much less wildlife the further south we get. We saw Canadian geese, egrets, ducks, an eagle diving for a fish. It still surprises us that we see so little boating activity on the river. But the river is strange in that it can be one mile wide and only a few inches deep in places.
As the heat rose, our energy waned. We only covered 26 miles instead of the expected 31. We got down to an access just 4 miles below our campground at about 4:45. From our campground, the Ferryboat Campsite, to Millersburg across the river, ran the last remaining ferry anywhere along the Susquehanna. It could hold 3 cars and probably 20 passengers. At the campsite, when a white door that was mounted on a tree was turned toward the river, it was a signal for the ferry to cross over. It was a paddle wheeler. The thermometer in our truck read 98 degrees on our ride back to the camper.
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