Yesterday, Mark and I took our friend Bonnie, down the Jordan River for her first ride in both a canoe and on the river. When we had planned on this ride, I was going to use our own canoe, which is a 17′ Alumacraft. Compaired to the 12′ “Old Town’s” we rented from Swiss Hideaway, ours is a freighter. As we all know, freighters are a bitch to use on twisting rivers and speedboats are a riot. Our’s is great when we load it up with all our camping gear and paddle a couple miles to some island, but it’s too big for that river. I use to take Jan and all 4 kids on trips down it, but I’d be bushed when I got to Roger’s Bridge.
As soon as I pushed off from the landing at Graves’ Crossing, I knew it was going to be a fun ride. After pushing off, there’s a small straight run and then a down hill turn to the right, and shortly after that, a very tight one to the left. I was half way through the first turn and I gave it a kick in the ass followed by a hard right rudder and I almost turned it around. After fixing my over stearage I told Bonnie she could put the paddle away, I wouldn’t need the help. When we were talking about the ride, I’d told her that I might need some help with the turns, but all she had to do was paddle for stearage. In some of those turns the current want’s to slam you into the pile of logs on the bank, and I’ve always found it best to avoid ‘em. The river runs pretty quick down through the first dozen turns or so, but after that it was all cruise control.
I remember the first time I went down the river with my cousin Skip; we had some trouble with the very first turn. His dad, my Uncle Griff, had an “Old Town” and I think it was built when “Old Town” was “New”, and I think it was 22′ long. The ribs where Ash and the skin canvas and with a dozen people, that sum’bitch flew. With that history, I figured that Skip was not only my senior in age, but in experience too, so he was in the rear, steering, and me in the bow paddleing. Back then, I was full of strength and ambition, but lacking on common sense, so as soon as we pushed off, I started paddleing. I was still paddleing when we rammed into the left bank on the first right turn. I started laughing my ass off when we hit, and asked Skip why in hell we did that! Turned out, this was his first ride down a river and didn’t know how to turn the “friggin’ thing”. He got a quick lesson in “Navigational procedures” and I got one in “Common Sense”. He asked me why I was paddleing so hard, and why at all? I told him about gaining steerage over the current in turns and I was producing the thrust. He told me that all I needed for steerage was to travel faster than the current, but no faster. It’s no wonder Butch and I would get down a three hour river in two hours, in a freighter no less. Now when I see a turn coming up, I back paddle to come to a complete stop, and then lightly go through the turn. It’s a hellava lot easier and I don’t need to take a nap when I get home.
Butch and I had fished the river around the first of May, and at the time there was very little vegitation, now everything’s in full leaf, so much of it is shaded now. For the entire ride there was a nice breeze blowing upstream and it was enough to keep the ’skeeters at bay and we were able to outrun the deerfly’s.
Mark had decided he wanted to use one of those kayak’s and at first I kept a close watch, but after the first three turns, I knew he had the knack of it. He’d told me he’d been down the river in 8th grade, but he also told me that he tipped over twice; once at the very top, and again at the weir, so I wasn’t sure till then. Mark’s still of the “Strength and Ambition thing”, and would travel ahead of us a couple turns and wait, or paddle back upstream and meet us as we came down. Next trip, I’m going to use one of those.
We had left before the ‘hoards’ arrived so we pretty much had the river to ourselves, and there were many stretch’s where there was no sound but the birds and the frogs along the bank. There are portions of the river where the water’s a little turbid and you can see where sediment is graying the gravel beds, but there’s still stretch’s where it’s clear as ice and the color’s are still vibrant too. There are many spots where the trout have been cleaning off the bottom for their redds, but I’m afraid the sediment won’t give them a chance to survive. The left culvert is still the best one to take at Chestonia, that is if your hot and need to cool off, and they’re doing some bank reconstruction at Roger’s bridge. Evidently, there’s a lot of run off coming from the parking lot and they’re trying to control it. Not real sure why they planted 50 yards of sod, without any irrigation though. All that nice expensive blue-grass sod, and it’ll be straw by the end of the day, today.
