a few things became abundantly clear, long sleeves and tights or sun pants are a must. my farmer tan is pretty bitchin but i have no interest in nursing a sunburn for 80 hrs. steph saved the day, she sent sam with an extra long sleeve shirt that not only kept the burn off but help with chafing on my life jacket. a needed upgrade in the hat department is a must, my current river hat has little holes woven in it and apparently the sun can go right through those holes and burn a sweet pattern into your head...
river conditions seemed damn near just right, water was about 2' lower than our previous runs which didn't seem to affect our speed much and the added clarity of channel location was worth it. the wind was mild, and it was hot but it didn't feel too bad. our pace has been pretty consistent every time we have gone out, the thing that strikes me is that we don't go any faster but we go farther before feeling miserable, that means there is hope.
we ran the stretch from lexington to miami in the daylight and realized all of our miserableness from the last night run wasn't just in our minds, that stretch is just slow and weird. there is a big long sweeping curve to the right and it makes you feel like the channel must be elsewhere, it's not, just got to slug through it. i have a feeling there will be many more places such as that the farther we get down stream. by the time we got to waverly it was dusk and we realized we had strategically planned again for the least amount of moon possible, this time a waning crescent that wasn't even coming up till 2:15 in the a.m. it's probably good or we might not have spotted the ufo/ floating light thing, not even sure how to describe it but it was there and it was weird. i'll be on the lookout for that again.
we made a quick pit stop at hills island and decided we should come back and camp here on a more leisure expedition, very cool sand beach, no light pollution meant the stars were bright and although it was dark when we stopped you could sense the potential of a good time.
we only had 1 tree sneak up on us about 6 miles from the end which would have made for an unpleasant night had we hit it but we motored by without incident. moments like that coupled with the mild amounts of delirium we experienced gave us the notion that a sense of caution is not to be ignored at night.
at one break sam was making use of his pee jug and didn't realize we had drifted around 180 degrees so when we got back to paddling i was trying to turn us around and sam was was trying to paddle upstream, i laughed and laughed until we got to a bend that i swore was a straight until sam lit it up with the spot light and i had almost steered us right into the bank so sam had his laugh and all was good.
paddling at night is really pretty cool, at one point the big dipper was positioned over sams head and the stars were so bright it was just a beautiful sight, the kind scene that makes you wish all the people you care about could be there seeing the same thing with you...
those are my thoughts thus far.
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| waverly at dusk |
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| sam and jon at sibley |
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| hills island |
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| waverly dinner and a movie... |
