The Utah Canoeing Trip – Days 1-3

Bonus – Mother’s day!

The timing of this trip’s kick-off was fortuitous in that it allowed me to swing through Roanoke, on my way out west, to celebrate Mother’s day with my dear mom. That always means extra fun like solving a mail sync problem between her iPad and her Macbook Pro, figuring out why her Macbook Pro has come to a crawl and other such giga-problems. For all the trouble I caused my mom during my teenage years I have a lot of computer fixin’ to do to repay my debts!

 

The house and surrounding acreage along with the swiftly running spring creek providing background noise was quite nice.

 

While out with my mom I met a cyclist doing the ACA Northern Tier from Yorktown to Seattle. We gave him a place to shower, pitch his hammock for the night and have breakfast. Good luck Brendan!

 

Breakfast at Humpback Covered Bridge in Covington, VA

I departed my parent’s place Monday morning, heading to Clifton Forge to check out what looked like a cool train museum but arrived an hour before they opened. I didn’t see anything I couldn’t pass up, so I blew it off and kept going down the road, stopping at a covered bridge near Covington for breakfast. One nice thing about parks during the week is that you have the place to yourself:

While I was there, a pair of cyclists came through. They are riding the ACA Alleghany Mountains Loop, a 400 mile loop which I’ve ridden a modified version of twice: once with my brother Eric, once with my friend Dave with whom I’m doing this paddling trip with. Richard and Patsy both caught cold while cycling this tour, though were in great spirits. Currently living in San Diego, they have toured all over the US and abroad.

 

May 11, 12 at Daniel Boone National Forest, Minor Clark Fish Hatchery and Cave Run Lake

I pretty much drove through to the Daniel Boone National Forest in KY where I stayed for a day. Last February they received 17″ of snow followed by 50 degree weather just a couple of days later so Cave Run Lake fulfilled one of its critical duties: flood control. The lake is about 22′ above normal height even though it has been 2 months since the event. The main benefit to me was getting to see some serious water being released downstream. The release point is a pipe that’s about 8-10′ in diameter with so much water shooting out that the ground was rumbling. The flow was so strong that for most of the first 100′ of the release channel, the surface of the water was actually flowing back upstream, towards the release point. In numbers, it was just shy of 5000 CFS when I was there which is the flow rate Dave and I were expecting across the whole width of the Green River (though data shows about 10,000 CFS right now – yee-haw!).

 

Did I mention that during the week you have most of the parks of the US to yourself? I had a very peaceful lunch where I saw zero people for the two hours I was there, unless someone snuck by while I napped in the hammock.

 

National Parks are awesome in that you can pitch camp anywhere you want. I will typically look at a contour map and place my bets on a forest road that looks promising, then take off and look for a place to call home for a night. This night I was looking for a flat spot near a creek (for a bath with ambiance) and nearby hiking trails. The perfect spot was found only 20 minutes into the search and even included a fire ring and no mobile phone service – perfect! I snuck in a 6 mile hike, washed off in the creek and read for a couple of hours in my hammock.

 

At this point I’m planning to take off for Berea, KY in the morning to check out their artisans and galleries as well as whatever else comes up on the sway out west. Stay tuned!