Bent Creek to Howardsville - May 30th, 2010
Trip length: ~27 miles
Kayaks taken:
Brian - Stealth 12
Tom - X-13
Jason - X Factor
We already had this trip scheduled, so we decided to go ahead and go through with it, even though the river was a little bit high, and was definitely muddy. Looking at the lack of clarity in the water and how fast the water was moving, we put our fishing rods back in the truck and decided just to paddle. We had planned for an overnighter and packed our kayaks for one. We thought it would be cool to float up to and camp at the James River State Park, but it was way too early into the trip, and was way too early in the day when we got there.
We didn't get much sleep the night before and weren't looking forward to a night of trying to sleep on the ground, so we just kept paddling, with an eye towards finishing in one day. We really didn't notice much on this trip, the way you might if you took more time. We made it to where we had planned on camping by lunchtime, so we definitely felt like it was worth trying to do all 27 miles in a single day, and so we did, and that's really about all there is to say about our trip on this section. We pretty much just made this trip all about making some mileage.
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Here we are, packing our boats for launch. You can see in the background that the river is a little high and muddy. |
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Tom puts his head down and just paddles... looking for an end to the day... |
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... And here's the end of a very long day, the takeout at Howardsville, just on the other side of the bridge on river left. |