Green River Part 1: The Long Drive West

Vacation approached very slowly on Friday, June 3. Both of us worked semi-normal days with mine coinciding with a deadline that existed only because I was leaving for two weeks. Minutes were hours, hours were days. Or so it felt. Finally, we began our journey west after a quick dinner at the fruit tea place that Lucas enjoys so much. As we approached our first interstate, I asked a fateful pair of questions, "Do you have your spare key? Do you want to go get it?" I mention these questions because they become important in a later tale. Both questions were answered in the negative and we began our journey away from Nashville.

Several hours brought us to Illinois that night. The next morning, we motored past our companions who were having car issues. In Missouri, we inherited their trailer and the lack of speed that goes with it. Missouri led to Kansas, which made me think of my friend Andy and his cross country adventure with another friend. Kansas was the only state Andy was allowed to drive in. Small hills became small rises, which became flat highway for miles. The clouds grew dark as the radio warned of tornados and hail. High winds, rain and hail followed quickly. Welcome to Kansas. Mark and Kerry hid under an overpass. We stopped at an exit, letting the weather decide it was our dinnertime. The storm cleared and we forged onward, calling it a night less than an hour's drive from Colorado.

Morning brought first glimpses of the mountains after we crossed the border. At one of the rest areas, a nice gentleman wearing a blue polo shirt and a matching blue speedo struck up a conversation with us to see where we were headed with our gear-laden trailer. He'd been on the same stretch of river at 30 or 40K. He said the two spots to watch out for were Wire Fence and Three Fords rapids. We checked those out in the guidebook as we continued toward the mountains. Except for occasional ventures into second gear, the journey through the mountains was uneventful. We found whitewater on the other side. First Clear Creek, then the Eagle River and finally the Colorado River, which we followed for quite a while.

Mark and Kerry followed the Colorado all the way to Moab. They opted for the cheap hotel. We opted for the cheaper camping and headed for Green River State Park to sleep near the river that would be our home for the next two weeks.

Hiwassee Invasion: Memorial Day

The typical inaugural weekend for the Hiwassee is Memorial DAy. Sometimes they sneak a few releases in before, but the big weekend for all the boaters comes at Memorial Day. For us, this weekend is like visiting with an old friend. We invited a bunch of people and had 8 other people camping with us and probably about twice as many cooking/eating with us.

The weather wasn't as bright and sunny as it could have been, so the river wasn't as big a traffic jam as it could have been. I spent Saturday in my kayak doing a little teaching and a little boat wrangling. Saturday night, after Rachel and I enjoyed a short bike ride, we shared in a potluck dinner with everyone at camp. Sunday and Monday were solo canoe days for me -- I let Jody borrow my tandem partner. The canoe is getting a lot more comfortable for me. Diann gave me some good tips here and there. Leaning makes sense. I can't do everything I can do in a kayak, but that time will come.

Intro School 5/21-5/22/05

Recreational kayakers beware! Lucas and I along with Mary Buckner and Lisa McCarter were assigned a class of 18 recreational kayakers for Intro School. After conducting the boat rodeo roundup that included a trip to Murfreesboro to borrow from the Murrays' Armada, we arrived at Montgomery Bell State Park just in time for the last of the milling before bed.

In the morning, after edutainment from the likes of Charlie, Kelsey, Lisa and others, we met with our co-instructors to discuss a lesson plan. A little late, but who's counting. We met up with our class and spent sometime on land talking about boats and paddling. We headed for the lake at lunchtime.

After lunch, I brought out my teaching bag and dressed about 1/4 of the class (everyone who showed up in cotton). Then we set out to see if we could learn a few things. We did stroke instruction in a circuit and then toured the lake a bit before returning to the boat dock for wet exit adventures. By mid-afternoon, an audience of fishermen, women and children had amassed by the shore.

Tim Keen had warned me that rescues with recreational kayaks were next to impossible and I passed that information along, but we tried them anyway. Lisa and I demonstrated the two re-entry techniques. We had no problems because we had floatation. Most of the recreational kayaks do not. Although there is ample space behind the seat in most kayaks for float bags, no one makes a recreational kayak size. Maybe with the surge in popularity of recreational kayaking, some manufacturer will step up. Anyway...

Our first student was successful with both the wet exit and the reentry... until she sat upright. Then the kayak submarined beneath her, diving stern first. We discovered that rescues worked if we could get some of the water out of the kayak first.

We finished drowning everyone around 3pm. Everybody seemed appropriately tired. Lucas and I took my canoe and his kayak out for a quick spin before rejoining everybody back at camp. Dinner was fantastic, prepared by the Tennessee Wildlife Gourmet. The entertainment was good, too. I had fun writing the quiz and both Lucas and I enjoyed helping with prize distribution.

On Sunday, we split up into three smaller groups for on-river instruction and adventuring on the mighty Harpeth. We put in at a park in Kingston Springs and took out above Highway 70. It was nice to see another section of the river besides the Narrows. Lucas paddled in a tandem rec kayak and I paddled my borrowed aircraft carrier. It was a bit of a handicap teaching eddy turns and peel outs because my boat required extra paddle strokes beyond what most of our students needed. It seemed that everybody had a good time on the river and everybody was comfortable with Harpeth-sized maneuvers. I look forward to seeing a couple of the students at the June whitewater school. :)

We arrived at the takeout in one piece and finished the day with two hours of milling and boat loading. Our trip home wasn't too far but we made it feel like more of a typical river trip by driving to Murfreesboro and back again.

Instructor Seminar -- chasing my Olympic dream

After two good days of working on technique with Sam Davis and Scott Strausbaugh (former Olympians), Vicki talked me into running the first rapid on the Olympic course of the Ocoee. She said it was a couple of fun waves and then an easy eddy to catch on river left. She was right. It was fun. But the easy eddy to catch was on river left and the easy exit at the Whitewater Center was on river right. I would have to ferry across the current or hike around to the bridge with my boat to get there.

I decided to attempt the ferry even though the Ocoee and I don't exactly have the best relationship. My first attempt didn't get me out of the eddy, so Scott Mann, who is training for Nationals, Worlds and the next Olympics, and who helped us with the second day of training, tried to talk me through the ferry. I found myself sideways on the eddy line and then I found myself traveling downstream with the current. Screaming. Henry and Jack yelled at me to paddle as I screamed past them. Scott chased behind me telling me to catch the eddy on the left. Aaaah's were interspersed with Help Me's as I approached Smileys ledge. The paddler in the hole there saw/heard me and took off downstream. Scott continued to chase, telling me to eddy left. Still screaming, I went over Smileys Ledge. A face full of water stopped me from screaming and I caught a river left eddy, thus ending the pursuit of my Olympic dream. Scott caught the eddy, too, and helped me crawl from the kayak to the big pile of rocks next to me after my knocking knees had slowed to more of a twitch. I thanked him and wished him well in the upcoming team trials before carrying my boat up, across the bridge and back down like I should have done in the first place.

North Fork of the Cumberland 5/7-5/8/05

Bob Pierce posted an overnight canoe trip on the North Fork of the Cumberland River in Kentucky on the TSRA website, so of course I was in touch within days if not hours to sign Lucas and myself up. We launched with nearly every style of boat and every class of paddler represented. Skipper Milo and first mate Grey graced us with their presence. I didn't get to see Grey walk the gunwales, but I did get to hear her snore from her bed beneath Jean's seat.

The river was wide, but relatively fast-moving. After a few miles, the scenery changed from farmlands to rolling hills. When we took our lunch break, those who made fun of our amply-packed boat found themselves having chair envy. A few miles after lunch, we stopped for the day, leaving us plenty of daylight at camp and over 10 miles to paddle the next day.

I enjoyed a nap to banish the remnants of a migraine. Others lounged around an eventual campfire. Our dinner was supposed to be stuffed shells and dessert was supposed to be baked brie to use up some cheeses from my refridgerator. Sadly, those cheeses never made it past Lucas' refridgerator, but happily, we invented a new recipe for stuffed shells that was even better. Instead of ricotta and egg, we mixed shredded mozzarella blend, egg and milk to make the stuffing. Yum. If ever I make stuffed shells again, this is the recipe I will use.

Sunday on the river gave us some good rapids, including a river-wide wave hole and a couple of good shoals. It wasn't long before we saw the big caution signs for the waterfall, indicating that our mustn't miss takeout was approaching. A couple of people joked about running the falls. I said I'd only run it backwards. Someday, I would like to run the whitewater section below it. The outfitter that ran our shuttle for the overnighter runs a service where they pick you up on a party boat and feed you lunch instead of you having to slog across several miles of lake. That's how I'd like to do it.

The overnighter section is definitely a do over for a lazy weekend on the water. Maybe we could even start higher and paddle just a little.

Jones Creek -- 5/1/05

After the Mill Creek trip, we emailed Bob Pierce asking (a) if he and Jean wanted to paddle and (b) if he had any suggestions for Nashville-area creeks. He turned us down for paddling, but suggested we check out Jones Creek or Turnbull Creek, providing us approximate put-in and takeout locations for both runs. We had considered a day trip to the Plateau as well, but the joys of less than six hours in the car plus the possibility of a new river won out easily. We chose Jones Creek and began rounding up other paddlers.

Lucas and I left somewhat early on Sunday to scout shuttle locations. The put-in was easy to find but we struck out twice on possible takeouts. We met Jody, Chris and Pat at the put-in. Lucas taught Chris how to paddle stern in a canoe while Jody and I made a third attempt at finding a takeout. We ended up leaving Lucas' truck at a semi-legal takeout by a low water bridge. At least the bridge gave us a well-defined marker for the takeout. We just hoped the truck would be there when we arrived.

Bob warned us that it would be a long paddle, so I admit I was a little worried when we launched after 2pm. The water was moving pretty quickly when we launched, so I didn't worry too much. We noticed some definite gradient to the creek as we paddled through some small wave trains. Harpeth-sized rock bluffs lined the path the river followed, sometimes far off at the edge of the floodplain and other times, running along the banks. The creek reminded me a little of Fortyeight Creek, except without the strainer issues or the waterlogged retrivers trying to climb into the canoe. A few rapids even pushed toward Class II.

Chris mentioned something about no beavers living in this part of Tennessee just as three beavers dove into the water to prove him wrong. Other wildlife included kingfishers, herons, robins, and birds I haven't learned to name yet. We passed a couple of rednecks working on the roof of a house. One of them yelled something about not falling out of our boats because we might get wet. I thought he might fall off his roof. Soon after, we came to the biggest rapid of the day, a two-foot river-wide ledge. We ran it center with no difficulty. Pat noticed the hole was a tad sticky.

Not long after the ledge, we found our takeout bridge. Until the last second, we couldn't see the bridge, so Jody and I were a little anxious. We checked the time when we started loading boats and gear. Turns out we ran 10-12 miles of river in about 3 hours, without a whole lot of effort. I think Bob was a little bit jealous when I told him.

Mill Creek cleanup and river trip - 4/30/05

So it rained A LOT and the plateau was cranking, but we had committed ourselves to the Mill Creek cleanup. Of course, we planned to run a section of the creek once the cleanup was done. Mill Creek is one of Nashville's hints of whitewater. When we arrived at the park to help with the cleanup, it was cranking, too. Most of the garbage we were hoping to clean up was underwater and the current was too fast to have garbage barges (canoes) working the banks, so the cleanup didn't take long at all.

After lunch, Lucas and I, Jody and Blaine, and Jim and Amy hit the water in tandem canoes. The creek was much more scenic than we expected. Except for the constant din from the nearby traffic, and of course, the trash along the river, the scenery and especially the birds were impressive. Kingfishers and Great Blue Herons are the ones I remember. There were a few other pretty birds that I couldn't identify.

When we reached the gorge section (the name Lucas chose for the whitewater section), we caught an eddy on river right to admire a waterfall on the rock bluff. We noticed that our waterfall was created by a pipe discharging water at the top of the bluff. Not quite wilderness. Still, the rapids were fun. There were definitely waves and ledges pushing class II. Near the end, we paddled up a small tributary creek that had some whitewater of its own -- a small ledge maybe 18" tall. We would need more water to run that creek.

Between the trash, the noise and the pipe waterfall, Mill Creek was a bit too urban for me, especially when I had to shout to be heard over the traffic. I'd run it again, especially when the next cleanup rolls around. Until then, however, there are other rivers higher on the list.

vacation aftermath

We got back from our Green River adventure around 5pm today. The notebooks are all caught up through Day 9 of the trip, so those adventures will start to trickle their way here. I'm happy to be home after all of the driving, but I'd much rather still be paddling right now. It seemed so much slower getting home, even without the trailer tire debacle.