A day at the river

Today I went kayaking down the Chetco River. It took me about 3 and a half hours to make the trip from the South Fork bridge down to the Loeb campground. I paddled almost constantly in order to keep Becky from waiting too long at each of the checkpoints that we had set up along the route. It was overcast and drizzling as I started out my journey, but as the trip continued the sky cleared up and turned into a really nice day.

By the second hour I wasn't sure if I could make the entire run. It was really windy and my hands were pretty blistered up from holding the paddle, but I was determined to make it. As the afternoon wore on the wind died down a bit and there were a few minutes here and there where I would just drift and listen to the sounds of the forest and river around me. This place is so peaceful.

I did manage to finish the entire trip. There were quite a few spots where I had to get out of the kayak and guide it across shallow or tricky spots in the river. I didn't find any real surprises. There were no spots in the river where you couldn't see far enough ahead to avoid any problems.

We decided to go ahead and spend the night at the campground, so we set up a couple of tents and went about making a campfire. The "fire gnome" kept watch on the fire and made sure that the smoke went his direction instead of toward all of us.

I am pretty surprised at the lack of mosquitoes this close to the water. So far I have only seen a couple of them. That's a big change from our stay in the Minnesota lakes area where as soon as the sun goes down you have to head indoors or be prepared to be eaten alive...