Geography
Three very tough but successful days
Sorry I haven’t written for a few days. I’ve just been so cold and tired that I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Yesterday was the easiest of the three, so I got my journal current, which I will now share: Tuesday, 2/5/13: 15.2 miles; Trip: 1468.7 miles Wednesday, 2/6/13: 11.9 miles; Trip: 1480.6 miles … Continue reading
Sidelined by floods… again!
Paddled 1-29-13: 16.4 miles (4.1 miles were repeated from previous week) Trip: 1439.5 miles Richard Grove and I went back below Rome Monday to work on the sections of the Coosa River and the Etowah that I had skipped. I’ve written about what a great day Monday was, knocking out seventeen miles that I had … Continue reading
Unimaginable courage
Today’s miles: 20.1 Trip miles: 1040.5 There’s something cool about hitting that 1000-mile mark. Yeah, it’s just a number, but numbers are cool. The number 1000 has an integer cube root, and there aren’t that many numbers that we commonly deal with that can brag that they have an integer cube root. My age does, … Continue reading
The Big Loops
The river above Miller’s Ferry comprises two really big loops. This is one only two areas where Corps dams have flooded outside of the channel on the Alabama R. I thoroughly enjoyed staying well out of the channel this morning because it gave me a bit of a shortcut, allowed me to avoid some headwind, … Continue reading
On to the next lake
Today’s miles: 13.4 Trip miles: 959.7 After yesterday’s marathon, I took it a bit easy today. I wanted to be in a park with showers and laundry, and the choices were 13 miles or 28 miles, so I went the easy route. Today was nearly all paddling except for the last two miles, where I … Continue reading
Alabama stinks! Sunday, 12/2/12
Today’s miles: 17.9 Trip miles: 895.5 Miles upriver since Mobile Bay: 116.1 Not the whole state, but the Alabama River really stinks. There have been a lot of water hyacinths floating down the river, and a couple of fishermen I have asked about the smell have blamed the Corps of Engineers for releasing hyacinths from … Continue reading
Alabama Rocks! Saturday, 12/1/12
Really, Alabama rocks: These were the first rocks I had seen along the Alabama River, and I guess they came as a bit of a surprise. I had been in the Mobile-Tensaw delta, and all of a sudden, here were rock outcrops. The area is identified on my map as Marshall’s Bluff. I camped not … Continue reading
Dead dinosaurs
Today’s miles: 14.0 Trip miles: 838.5 Fourteen miles doesn’t seem like much, but I think I was a little more whipped from pushing so hard yesterday than I realized. Oh, and it was against the wind all but about two miles. That’s my story, and I’m sticking with it. I encountered my first sandbar on … Continue reading
Sweet Home Alabama
Yay! I’m on the Alabama River! Today’s miles: 21.0 Trip miles: 824.5 I started the day at 7:20 on the Middle River, paddled to the confluence with the Tensaw River, then to the Mobile River, which I had to share with a couple of tugs pushing several barges each, and finally to the Alabama River, … Continue reading
Campsites
I was a bit concerned about finding a decent campsite yesterday as I paddled/sailed up the Tensaw River. All I saw for miles was low, wet ground covered with cypress or aquatic grasses. I used the iPhone’s Maps app to look at satellite imagery, but only saw one promising area that I couldn’t possibly reach … Continue reading