Maggie

End of day two

June 15, 2015 by Maggie, posted in Canoe Trips, Ohio River, River locks

My apologies to those who may be trying to follow our journey on the blog. I have had some technical problems. But for now let me tell you we have had to splendid days on the Ohio River. Each daywe have peddled 25 miles so we have paddled a total of 50 miles. The river over all has been very good to us. The weather overall has been very good to us. We had a bit of a thunderstorm today but we were able to take cover for about 30 minutes and then get back out on the river. Late in the afternoon the wind kicked up so badly that we had to spend about 2 1/2 hours on a river café. Somehow we managed! We have found great people along the river as usual. Last night we stayed in an RV resorts. Tonight we found a bit of dryland to camp along the river. Perhaps our favorite quotes of the trip so far is the young man at the RV resort last night who when we referred to ourselves as old said “there’s not an ounce of old between the two of you!” We took it as a great compliment. So I’m going to sign off now. It’s very hot and humid and we’re going to try to sleep a few hours before setting off very early tomorrow morning and what we hope will be calm waters.

We are ready!

June 12, 2015 by Maggie, posted in Uncategorized

24 hours from now, Karen and I will be sitting on the banks of the Ohio River, wondering what the week will bring us. We already know that it promises a lot of rain. We are OK with that as at least it will be warm rain. We remember, not fondly, a few trips in the spring and fall when we were pretty sure we were going to get hypothermia. So a warm summer rain works.

We just talked on the phone, discussing the final arrangements and the kindness of friends who will help us with the logistics. Seems each year that we trust more that things will unfold as they should. Yes, we are both excited.

At 4 am tomorrow, John and I will leave to go to Logan airport. My excitement for the trip will overcome my desire to stay in bed, I am sure. So, here’s to a safe and fun-filled week. Karen, I’m glad beyond words that we are friends and that our friendship has outlasted major moves, job changes and the many things are can separate friends over decades.

The Rivers are Flowing Again

April 29, 2015April 29, 2015 by Maggie, posted in Uncategorized

It was just a few weeks ago, early April, when the frozen surface of the Connecticut River finally broke up and floated away. One day it was frozen and the next day it was a sea of ice floes. Then it returned to just a river, flowing towards the ocean. Finally this long winter is giving way to spring. It is taking its merry time but it is happening. The grass is all of the sudden turning green again and the first daffodils are showing their bright faces in Vermont.

Perhaps it is all this change that finally pushed me to making my plane reservations to fly to Ohio in June where I will be met by Karen in her van with our red canoe, Wonder, atop it. We will drive together to the spot in the Ohio River where we stopped paddling two years ago. Seems like forever since that day that we managed one mile an hour against strong headwinds just about 50 miles shy of Cinncinati. Maybe it was fortuitous that we didn’t get as far as we had hoped. This year, because we are still near the city, we are going to partake of a communal paddling event, The Great Ohio River Paddlefest, with a few hundred other kayak and canoe enthusiasts. That takes place on June 19th, the end of our week on the river.

So, I have made the plane reservations. Now I have to sort through the boxes in our new home to find the camping and canoeing gear. I know that I packed it somewhat sensibly but I didn’t think to keep it separate from other boxes as I thought we would have actually moved into the house by June. We are remodelling an old farm house and, of course, it all takes longer than anticipated. So the boxes are still in the garage. I should start looking this weekend!

It is time to start looking at maps and plotting our course. Who will we meet this year? We don’t know the specifics but we do know that they will be the generous and hospitable people for whom the Ohio River is their front yard.

Canoe Dancing

April 4, 2015April 4, 2015 by Maggie, posted in Uncategorized

I have often said that if someone can think it up, someone is already doing it. Well, I never would have thought up the concept of canoe dancing but obviously others have thought it and done it. As the ice recedes from the Connecticut River and my eyes and heart set themselves on another river, The Ohio, I look forward to a week of paddling with Karen as we make our way down to the Mississippi. We engage at this time of the year in the practical planning. How will I get to here? What city to fly into so Karen can fetch me on her way from Jamestown with Wonder, our canoe, atop her van? What cool new item of clothing might I find to take this year? Or interesting new dehydrated dinner?

As I ponder these practical things, up on my Facebook comes a promotion for the Ohio River Paddle Fest which we hope to attend at the end of our week this year. The promotion shows a canoe dancer! Yes, you read that right. There are people out there who dance with their canoes! It feels akin to wheelchair dancing in that the dancer is part of an inanimate object that takes on a life of its own in the gestalt of the dance. Don’t believe me? Click here to check this one out and then google “canoe dance” to find more.

I doubt Karen and I will become professional canoe dancers but I can imagine that if we find a bend in the river where no one is watching (and there are PLENTY of them), we might just see what we can do. Also, there needs to be no wind. That might kill any idea of trying this as there is seldom of time there is no wind on that river.

Canoe dancing? Who’d a thunk it? What else do people do with their canoes that we don’t know about?

Narnia

March 22, 2015March 22, 2015 by Maggie, posted in Uncategorized

Those of us who live in the northeast feel as though we have been in the grasp of the White Witch from The Chronicles of Narnia for months. We just can’t shake winter. There have maybe been two days in the last two weeks where the temperatures have been sustained at above freezing long enough to get a decent flow of sap going. We put out sap buckets on a couple of the trees on our new property in Vermont. We have collected maybe four gallons of sap, enough to boil down to one tenth of a gallon of syrup. Of course, we will wait until we have a little more before starting that process. It’s just a childhood fancy of mine to boil my own sap. We’ll get what we get. But for many in Vermont it is a livelihood so I hope that when it starts flowing consistently it will keep it up well into April. I don’t know how those who depend on the weather for their incomes sleep at night!

So, while we wait for the snow to melt and the snow drops and crocuses to emerge, I look into other paddling blogs. I find interesting stories like the young people who make kayaks out of soda bottles to educate about the environment. On the other hand, I find that we could abandon Karen’s trusty, soft-sided cooler and invest in a high-tech cooler by Yeti that costs over $300. Hum, I think we’ll stick to the old one. And I cross the as yet still frozen Connecticut River awaiting anxiously the day that I see the ice break up and float away. Then I will believe that we will actually have another week to paddle the Ohio River this summer!

Meanwhile, the low today, March 22, is supposed to be 7 degees. At least it is 7 above zero for a change.

Possessions: what do we really need?

March 4, 2015March 4, 2015 by Maggie, posted in Uncategorized

John and I moved our household to Vermont last weekend. I drove the 26 foot U Haul truck from Massachusetts. It was full to the brim with our worldly possessions. We have moved a lot in the last ten years. In 2004, we moved from Jamestown, NY, to Santa Fe, NM. North American Van Lines informed us that we had trucked 10,000 pounds of stuff with us. We were appalled. I was proud to report that when we moved from Santa Fe to Massachusetts, we were down to 6000 pounds. That was the last that we weighed our stuff.

The good folks of South Acton Congregational Church in Acton, MA, raise funds by helping people move!

The move from a rental to a new home in Lancaster was done by locals so it wasn’t weighed. And, as mentioned, we did U Haul this past time. Again, not weighed. We lived in a small, two-bedroom Cape home in Massachusetts and felt like we didn’t have a lot of furniture or stuff. The thing with Cape-style homes: they are compact but can cleverly hold more than you think.

So, last Saturday as we made our way (or shall I say weigh) up I91 to West Windsor, VT, I pondered the concept of carrying our life’s collection of personal belongings in a huge truck to yet another new home. And I thought about the week that we spend on the Ohio River with nothing but the bare essentials with us. Karen and I are proud at how well we have learned to pack. We know what we need for a week and we are pretty darn compact. Oh course, we know that anything that goes into the canoe will likely have to be carried out of it each day as we set up camp. That keeps us frugal. It is freeing to live on so little even if only for a week. It is a reminder that we really don’t need much in life to be happy. And yet we carry tons, literally, of stuff from place to place because we can’t let it go for some reason.

I think that the idea of living in a tent, on camping mats with sleeping bags and dehydrated food and a couple of gallons of water at a time is one of the things I like the most about our canoe trips. My almost 59 year old body isn’t always thrilled with those sleeping mats but it copes for a week.

I know I can’t give up all the stuff that we dragged with us once again to our new home but our canoe trips are a good reminder that I could live just fine without it.

A Paddling Festival

February 21, 2015February 21, 2015 by Maggie, posted in Canoe Trips, Ohio River

Seldom in the years we have paddled have we run into other paddlers. We have seen a few kayaks but that was way back on the Upper Allegheny. A couple of years ago we came across some guys who paddled out onto the Ohio River with us for a little while. They were just playing around and keeping us company for a bit. It was fun.

Now, as we plan the 2015 adventure, we have learned the the city of Cincinnati has a paddling festival in the middle of June so we are hoping to join a whole bunch of other paddlers and maybe even join a race. Click here for information on the Ohio River Paddlefest.

It’s fun to think of doing something like that. John and I lived in Bainbridge, NY, on the Susquehanna River for three years but I didn’t paddle then and seldom thought of the river. Bainbridge was the end of the General Clinton Canoe Regatta held every May. I can’t believe that I was not interested then. Maybe someday Karen and I will do that canoe race which starts in Cooperstown, the headwaters of the Susquehanna.

I’m sure there are many canoe events that we have never heard of…but we have a commitment to get down the Ohio River so the other festivals may have to wait a few more years.

The Chadakoin River and the end of the adventure for 2014

February 18, 2015February 18, 2015 by Maggie, posted in Allegheny River, Canoe Trips, Cassadaga Creek, Chadakoin River, NY

IMG_3276[1] — Paddling the gentle waters of the Chadakoin

IMG_3269[1] — Paddling out from the Celeron, NY, boat lauch

In the end, we did get on the water. And we were still within the bounds of the Ohio River watershed but the trip became a metaphor for me and an important one. Jordan drove us from Kennedy down to Chautauqua Lake and helped us get the canoe in at the docks in Celeron, famous for being the birthplace of Lucille Ball. She would have been proud at our persistence and amused at the ill-fated, to date, nature of our experience! The lake was calm in that area and off we pushed from the dock. Jordan managed to get some photos of us on the lake and in action. Since we usually do not have an audience, these kinds of photos are few and far between. While the previous day we had shot down the swollen headwaters of the Allegheny going 2 miles in 18 minutes, today, we would do another 2 miles in a leisurely three hours. We paddled from the lake into the Chadakoin River where the lake flows out and down eventually into the Allegheny River. It was lovely. We watched for wildlife including herons and turtles, ducks and geese. We paddled up a tiny creek and when we could go no further we stopped and had our lunch in the canoe. Then I ventured out, prepared for the march in Karen’s rubber boots, and tried to see what lay beyond a small dam. I did not get far so we paddled back out to the river and down to the power plant in downtown Jamestown. I lived near Jamestown and worked in Jamestown for 17 years and never knew the beauty of the river that ran through it. Of course, much has been done in recent years to create a river walk and improve the whole area. My hats off to those who worked so hard and continue to work on that project. This slow paddle was just what my body and spirit needed even though I had thought that I wanted the excitement of either the big Ohio River or the rushing waters of the upper Allegheny. Sometimes, you just have to go with the flow, even when it is slower than you thought you wanted. What will 2015 bring us?

IMG_3283[1] — Some beautiful mystery flowers in marshy areas.

Next try

February 17, 2015February 17, 2015 by Maggie, posted in Allegheny River, Canoe Trips, Cassadaga Creek, Conewango Creek, Marden Cobb Water Trail, Uncategorized

I’ve not yet aged to perfection. I still have a little of that accomplishment/acquisition blood in me. Having had our exciting though short-lived trip down the upper Allegheny, I wanted to do something major even if just a little major. I wanted to go up to Kennedy to get on the Conewango Creek upstream from where we had joined it years ago. We had already decided that the Cassadaga Creek presented too many issues of getting in and out or finding our way through the marshy parts. The Conewango is larger. And on Saturday when Karen’s son Jordan (getting to be baptized into the tradition of transporting us to or from paddling as Kyle and Chelsea had in the past) drove us to Kennedy, we learned it was not only larger but also significantly overflowing its banks.
We found that the road to the public ramp was closed because of the flooding water and, in case we were considering something stupid, a state trooper showed up just then to tell us the whole area was under water and we might consider getting in at Frewsburg. He must have known that we were all wondering what would happen if we drove around those barricades and found a way to get a canoe into the creek!

Two things: We had already paddled the Frewsburg part of the creek and we took this as a closure to getting onto the water that day. At least that is what we thought at the time.

Finally getting to see the headwaters

February 16, 2015June 17, 2015 by Maggie, posted in Allegheny River, Canoe Trips, Connecticut River

I only remember seeing the headwaters of one river before last year. It was the Arkansas River. That’s when I learned that rivers seem to be named for where they end, not where they begin. That’s an interesting notion to me! Somehow I had always thought that the headwaters of a river would be grand and obvious. The Arkansas starts in Colorado and the headwaters are a mere stream, of sorts, going through a meadow. This proved to be the same with the Allegheny.

After completing our flume/luge-like experience, our friend John was kind enough to oblige my desire to see where the river really started. I had googled it and found a sign indicating the headwaters. I wanted to see that sign and so he guided us back up river about 30 minutes to the meadow where the waters trickle together to begin the stream that becomes a river with deep waters and deeper history. The stream was tinier than Cassadaga Creek, that small waterway we had started on years earlier.

I still find it amazing that great things have such humble beginnings and I wonder if we will be able to someday say that we paddled to the other end of that river where it dumps its muddy waters into the Mighty Mississippi.