Andy P. and I finally pulled of a kayaking trip to the Adirondacks
we have done them in the past but it has been a few years.
After checking river levels we decided that we would paddle Otter
Creek and the Independence river. we set out early on saturday
morning stopping along the way at a pulloff along the Black River
for some inspiration. It worked I was inspired to choose life.
On to the put in for the paddle down Otter Creek. The put in was
in a state forest with free campsites and a couple of outhouses. Sadly the outhouses were not spotted before experiencing the oneness with
nature that one rarely (if lucky) gets to experience. This was our
camping site and that is our accomadations.
This was the scene just below our campsite.
Here is a video that Andy shot of me running a rapid........
for some reason he thought that start was stop.
either that or he was trying to steal the glory.
I am not saying that I did much better, for some reason I did not see that there was a big drop of
water in the middle of the lense oh well. this is about it for the camera while we were paddling,
while Andy had the camera he took about 5 pretty long videos of the rocks and his feet and the trees
thinking that the the video was stopped, which filled up the card.
We did have some good coffee and we had some steaks the way
nature meant for them to be cooked.
It was a very clear night with full moon so I took a shot of the rapids
in the moonlight.
on day two things got interesting. Otter creek had been a little low
the day before so we dicided to check out the independence, it was
even lower so we decided we needed to change our plan. so over our
steak and potatoes we dicided to go and paddle a section of the
Moose river the next day.
I will spare you the details which would have you saying "why" and "How in the world" and "what were they thinking" but as a teaser I will tell you that this is me checking out the put in for day two (yes we dicided
putting in after the culvert would be a wise choice), the day also involved a lot of hand propulsion and at one point (and this is a first for me) I had a frog hopping around inside my kayak.
Another shot of the uncharted waters. We think that we may have
come up with a new sport but we have yet to come up with an
appropriately appealing name for it. But needless to say some grand adventure was had and we did actually make it to the Moose river and ran a couple of very exciting rapids
Otter Creek water.
