This past weekend was busy for me! I woke up Saturday morning, the earliest I have in a long time, at 5:45 am! I could barely sleep the night before, as my body seems more accustomed to going to sleep between 1 and 3am and waking up at noon.
I was up this early to join my sister Michelle on her company trip to the Downriver Canoe Company somewhere between Bentonville and Luray, Virginia to canoe down the Shenandoah River! The drive there was pleasant and made me realize I really should be waking up earlier because the quality of light and the cool air is refreshing and kind of energizing.
Me in front of the cliffs just after the rapids
The place we went to is apparently just over the mountain from Fort Valley, where our cabin is. I haven’t been yet this summer, but there’s a chance I may go this week or next week to start clearing land so that we can get someone to demolish the cabin that currently has two trees in it.
We went on a 15 mile canoe trip! The most canoeing I had done was when I went to Camp Rim Rock in middle school and high school, and two other times canoeing on a lake with Michelle, but I had never canoed for this distance.
Of course, I just wanted to chill and float down the river at times, whereas my sister had a party to get to and complained near the end I wasn’t paddling enough. It’s tough to be a team when we both have different priorities. Such as the two times I wanted to canoe right up to the cows in the river, whereas my sister did not because they smelled and a few were using the river as their restroom, so I’m sure it was comical to see me paddling towards it and her away from it. We got close enough to make me happy, much to Michelle’s chagrin.
Michelle Canoeing near the cliffs
This canoe trip was a first for us as well: the first time we’ve been on rapids! There were two class 2 rapids, so not too big, but enough to cause us concern. The first rapids was about 4 miles into the trip, and just after that was the stop where everyone met for lunch, so the ones who got there early got the entertainment of watching their coworkers coming over the rapids, half of which had capsized and came floating down in their life vests.
Michelle and I managed not to capsize! It was close, as we hit the rapids bow first, which was promising, but then we were perpendicular to the river and we were told this was not good.
Yelling at each other, we mananged to paddle in line with the river as we came rocking down the rapids filling our canoe with water, however, we ended up stern first and heard laugher across the river as we flowed backwards into tree limbs hanging over the river. Good times.
Michelle Taking a Swim!
The other level two “rapid” was a place called “The Ledge” which was just a two foot drop, which we successfully navigated, but the dip motion caused a lot of water to slosh into our boat, which I managed to scoop out for the most part using the empty lunchables container from lunch.
Woody the Dog in a Canoe
After that, there was a fork to an “Old Mill Run” near the 12 or 13th mile of the trip, only navigable in times when there is higher water (it was higher than normal apparently so we decided to take it in hopes to see an old mill). Not only was this part of the river more shallow, but the river ran faster, and there were grasses and trees and mounds of who knows what throughout the tiny but meandering stream. We tried our best to paddle around these, but managed to run into everything, and much to Michelle’s anger, into tree limbs which she would grab hold of, then then release to fling back towards me. It was a little stressful, but it was pretty! And the Old Mill looked like it was renovated into a house, so the stone foundation was the only part that looked like an Old Mill.
After that, there was a fork to an “Old Mill Run” near the 12 or 13th mile of the trip, only navigable in times when there is higher water (it was higher than normal apparently so we decided to take it in hopes to see an old mill). Not only was this part of the river more shallow, but the river ran faster, and there were grasses and trees and mounds of who knows what throughout the tiny but meandering stream. We tried our best to paddle around these, but managed to run into everything, and much to Michelle’s anger, into tree limbs which she would grab hold of, then then release to fling back towards me. It was a little stressful, but it was pretty! And the Old Mill looked like it was renovated into a house, so the stone foundation was the only part that looked like an Old Mill.
Me Near the end of our trip!
