My best friend and I make a habit of going on adventures we are nowhere near qualified to handle. We once hiked part of the Appalachian Trail we had NO BUSINESS taking on. After the @$$ whipping we got from that we found out that the section we were hiking is regarded as one of the most difficult parts of the entire trail. We wore the wrong clothes. We took the wrong food. We took the wrong (too heavy) gear. It wasn't a total loss. We saw some amazing scenery. I would do it again.
Fast forward to yesterday. I like to kayak. I do it all the time in marshes, ponds, lakes, and the canals around our beach place. I do short trips.... so short I rarely take anything with me....other than perhaps two beers. But my buddy and I decided to kayak down a river from a town near me, through two other towns, and to yet another town.
How did we prepare? We didn't. What did we research? Nutn. We did wear lightweight, breathable, high SPF clothing. We did bring plenty of water, Off bug spray, sunscreen, some protein bars and some fruit. I had one small pistol with snake shot and one with regular bullets in case of gator sightings.... or the sound of banjos. That's about it.
We knew nothing about river current. (We learned a lot about it the hard way at the beginning of the trip.) We had NO IDEA how long it would take to get from the boat landing near Greenville, NC to the dock at downtown Washington, NC via the Tar River. We had guessed somewhere between 3 and 10 hours.
We had no idea where we would stop and stretch our legs, or take a pee break.
We did what we do. We picked a day. We packed some food. We took off. We hoped for the best.
"As the crow flies" it was 14 miles +/- from one landing to the other. But we had no idea how long it was following the curvature of the river.
Are we up to speed? Two guys. Not enough experience. Not NEARLY enough information. No idea about how the trip would go,, how long, where to stop, etc.
Away we go!
Here's the rig. Perception Tribe 13.5 ft. tandem kayak. He had a backpack. I had the clear container on the back. Two paddles (more on that later).
We're off!
One of the coolest things to me is these outer walls of the river where water has exposed half the roots of a big tree. (I love trees. I'm a tree dork.)
Country river folk know how to live. They have an actual home back off the river, and a "hangout" over the water. If this were mine, I would sleep out here 5 days a week.
This was the most amazing part of the trip. We kind of coasted while we got settled in. There was fog on the water. I was sipping coffee. We must have seen 100 deer still munching on grass and azaleas in people's yards before lying down for the day. Birds of prey were fishing all around us. Huge cranes, ducks, bald eagles, hawks, etc. were flying all around. Fish were breaking the water all around us. One water moccasin slithered by to our right but freaked out and took off when he saw us. Nature was everywhere.
This river has flooded in a big way twice in the last 20 years. Many of the properties along the shore were abandoned. I guess after two massive floods it just wasn't worth it to keep up the river place.
So after I finished my coffee, we did a solid hour of paddling. We didn't go as fast as we could go. Rather, we paced ourselves and kept it in "third gear" for the hour. Then we stopped and assessed our situation. Aw crap. We hadn't gotten as far as we thought. We weren't even a quarter of the way.... not even close. We both had a couple of river tracking apps on our phones. We took a minute to do some math. And reality set in. We were going to either take it easy and get there by dinner, or paddle pretty steady most of the way and get there by early/mid afternoon. The idea of paddling for 4-6 more hours seemed..... daunting. So we devised a plan.(Pro tip: Devising a river kayaking plan when you're already 2 or 3 miles down river is too late. That's a free tip form yer ole Uncle Twofer.)
We commenced to paddling, stopping only to take a swig of water or an occasional picture.
Another hour or so in we needed to stop, stretch our legs, eat a snack, and pee. We stumbled across a "Memorial Park" of sorts. It was a strange place, but pretty cool. We could see back in the woods a few hundred yards. There were no signs of life. No houses. Only a beautiful little dock and this memorial stone. In order to avoid offending anyone by hiking around their property, we stuck mainly to the dock.
A Kind Protein bar and a banana later, it's off again. Let's mount up! By the way @catcauphonic the Luna sandals handled the trip like a champ. I usually don't wear super loose clothes like this but I've lost almost 30 pounds in the last 8 or 9 months. Note the orange end of my paddle right by my foot.
No more had we gotten in the water good and one end of my paddle broke off!!!! If you don't kayak you may not know that kayak paddles have a paddle on both ends. And you paddle "left right left right". Canoe/boat ores have a paddle on ONE end, and you paddle on whichever side you need to to turn the boat.
Suddenly, less than halfway through, I had a canoe ore. Well crap. There's a lot less efficiency of motion when you have to completely pick it up and move it to the other side.... and switch hands. But that's where I was. So we had to press on.
We Saw some neat stuff. A capsized boat with graffiti on it...
Some nature...
As we got to wider and wider parts of the river, more creeks merged with the Tar. That made for stronger currents.... which we desperately needed. The river began to help us when we needed it the most.
One more stop. This is another abandoned flooded property. This dock didn't look old at all. If I had to guess I would say it was built just before the last flood a few years ago. Their hangout has obviously been under water. Sad to see such a pretty piece of riverfront property being wasted. But I can understand why someone wouldn't want to go through flooding twice.
It was getting toward noon and we had one long last leg to go. We decided to paddle it in. We knew we were getting to our limits. We needed to land this boat.
We knew we would cross under several bridges. None of them mattered until this one...the Hwy 17 bypass on the East side of Washington. That meant we had less than two miles before we docked this floating @$$ whipping we were on. My buddy stopped for a thumbs up when we saw the bridge.
We were tired. I mean really tired. As noted earlier, we had not worked out to prepare for this. While we're not in bad shape, we're not in twenty-miles-of-paddling shape either. The thought of a nice meal at a waterfront bar in town gave us an extra push. Giddy up!
Passing under the bypass was a moral victory.
And around one more turn we saw the "old bridge" going into downtown Washington!
We were almost home free! We limped in on tired arms and 1 1/2 paddles.
We landed! (Note the missing end of my paddle.)
Two giddy adventures had pulled out of Greenville around 7:45 a.m. Two whipped and hungry bastards landed in Washington barely under 18 miles later at 1:20 p.m.
I have been eating ridiculously healthy lately. But we hit up a bar/restaurant called "Down on Mainstreet". I had a fantastic burger (Sorry I was so hungry I didn't stop to take a pic) and a couple cold beers to celebrate.
We learned a lot. We shared some stress and some laughs. We did NOT learn our lesson, though. We'll pick another adventure soon. And we'll bite of more than we can chew... again. We will stretch ourselves beyond our limits. But it'll be fun. By the time we loaded up the boat, ate, drove back, and patted each other on the back a few times, I got home to my women (who were glad I hadn't died of stupidity) and one more nice scene.
It was a good day.
Fast forward to yesterday. I like to kayak. I do it all the time in marshes, ponds, lakes, and the canals around our beach place. I do short trips.... so short I rarely take anything with me....other than perhaps two beers. But my buddy and I decided to kayak down a river from a town near me, through two other towns, and to yet another town.
How did we prepare? We didn't. What did we research? Nutn. We did wear lightweight, breathable, high SPF clothing. We did bring plenty of water, Off bug spray, sunscreen, some protein bars and some fruit. I had one small pistol with snake shot and one with regular bullets in case of gator sightings.... or the sound of banjos. That's about it.
We knew nothing about river current. (We learned a lot about it the hard way at the beginning of the trip.) We had NO IDEA how long it would take to get from the boat landing near Greenville, NC to the dock at downtown Washington, NC via the Tar River. We had guessed somewhere between 3 and 10 hours.
We had no idea where we would stop and stretch our legs, or take a pee break. We did what we do. We picked a day. We packed some food. We took off. We hoped for the best.
"As the crow flies" it was 14 miles +/- from one landing to the other. But we had no idea how long it was following the curvature of the river.
Are we up to speed? Two guys. Not enough experience. Not NEARLY enough information. No idea about how the trip would go,, how long, where to stop, etc.
Away we go!
Here's the rig. Perception Tribe 13.5 ft. tandem kayak. He had a backpack. I had the clear container on the back. Two paddles (more on that later).
We're off!
One of the coolest things to me is these outer walls of the river where water has exposed half the roots of a big tree. (I love trees. I'm a tree dork.)
Country river folk know how to live. They have an actual home back off the river, and a "hangout" over the water. If this were mine, I would sleep out here 5 days a week.
This was the most amazing part of the trip. We kind of coasted while we got settled in. There was fog on the water. I was sipping coffee. We must have seen 100 deer still munching on grass and azaleas in people's yards before lying down for the day. Birds of prey were fishing all around us. Huge cranes, ducks, bald eagles, hawks, etc. were flying all around. Fish were breaking the water all around us. One water moccasin slithered by to our right but freaked out and took off when he saw us. Nature was everywhere.
This river has flooded in a big way twice in the last 20 years. Many of the properties along the shore were abandoned. I guess after two massive floods it just wasn't worth it to keep up the river place.
So after I finished my coffee, we did a solid hour of paddling. We didn't go as fast as we could go. Rather, we paced ourselves and kept it in "third gear" for the hour. Then we stopped and assessed our situation. Aw crap. We hadn't gotten as far as we thought. We weren't even a quarter of the way.... not even close. We both had a couple of river tracking apps on our phones. We took a minute to do some math. And reality set in. We were going to either take it easy and get there by dinner, or paddle pretty steady most of the way and get there by early/mid afternoon. The idea of paddling for 4-6 more hours seemed..... daunting. So we devised a plan.(Pro tip: Devising a river kayaking plan when you're already 2 or 3 miles down river is too late. That's a free tip form yer ole Uncle Twofer.)
We commenced to paddling, stopping only to take a swig of water or an occasional picture.
Another hour or so in we needed to stop, stretch our legs, eat a snack, and pee. We stumbled across a "Memorial Park" of sorts. It was a strange place, but pretty cool. We could see back in the woods a few hundred yards. There were no signs of life. No houses. Only a beautiful little dock and this memorial stone. In order to avoid offending anyone by hiking around their property, we stuck mainly to the dock.
A Kind Protein bar and a banana later, it's off again. Let's mount up! By the way @catcauphonic the Luna sandals handled the trip like a champ. I usually don't wear super loose clothes like this but I've lost almost 30 pounds in the last 8 or 9 months. Note the orange end of my paddle right by my foot.
No more had we gotten in the water good and one end of my paddle broke off!!!! If you don't kayak you may not know that kayak paddles have a paddle on both ends. And you paddle "left right left right". Canoe/boat ores have a paddle on ONE end, and you paddle on whichever side you need to to turn the boat.
Suddenly, less than halfway through, I had a canoe ore. Well crap. There's a lot less efficiency of motion when you have to completely pick it up and move it to the other side.... and switch hands. But that's where I was. So we had to press on.
We Saw some neat stuff. A capsized boat with graffiti on it...
Some nature...
As we got to wider and wider parts of the river, more creeks merged with the Tar. That made for stronger currents.... which we desperately needed. The river began to help us when we needed it the most.
One more stop. This is another abandoned flooded property. This dock didn't look old at all. If I had to guess I would say it was built just before the last flood a few years ago. Their hangout has obviously been under water. Sad to see such a pretty piece of riverfront property being wasted. But I can understand why someone wouldn't want to go through flooding twice.
It was getting toward noon and we had one long last leg to go. We decided to paddle it in. We knew we were getting to our limits. We needed to land this boat.
We knew we would cross under several bridges. None of them mattered until this one...the Hwy 17 bypass on the East side of Washington. That meant we had less than two miles before we docked this floating @$$ whipping we were on. My buddy stopped for a thumbs up when we saw the bridge.
We were tired. I mean really tired. As noted earlier, we had not worked out to prepare for this. While we're not in bad shape, we're not in twenty-miles-of-paddling shape either. The thought of a nice meal at a waterfront bar in town gave us an extra push. Giddy up!
Passing under the bypass was a moral victory.
And around one more turn we saw the "old bridge" going into downtown Washington!
We were almost home free! We limped in on tired arms and 1 1/2 paddles.
We landed! (Note the missing end of my paddle.)
Two giddy adventures had pulled out of Greenville around 7:45 a.m. Two whipped and hungry bastards landed in Washington barely under 18 miles later at 1:20 p.m.
I have been eating ridiculously healthy lately. But we hit up a bar/restaurant called "Down on Mainstreet". I had a fantastic burger (Sorry I was so hungry I didn't stop to take a pic) and a couple cold beers to celebrate.
We learned a lot. We shared some stress and some laughs. We did NOT learn our lesson, though. We'll pick another adventure soon. And we'll bite of more than we can chew... again. We will stretch ourselves beyond our limits. But it'll be fun. By the time we loaded up the boat, ate, drove back, and patted each other on the back a few times, I got home to my women (who were glad I hadn't died of stupidity) and one more nice scene.
It was a good day.
