Assabet, Nashua, Millers!!

So we had a pretty good paddling week and hit three different rivers to changes things up a bit.

Wednesday night we made it over to the Assabet River in Hudson, this is a great spring time training spot with lots of hairpin turns and a good amount of water in the Spring. We hadn’t been on the river since last spring so of course there is always the anticipation of what lies around the next corner, i.e. trees down or any other obstacles that can shift in the river over a years’ time. It was pretty easy going for about a half an hour to forty-five minutes and then we hit a little snag, a spot in the river that was always a little sketchy and tight to begin with had been pretty well clogged up this winter. Either the beavers were starting to dam it up or an old beaver dam washed down stream. No matter the case we had to turn around way short of what we wanted to and ended up doing a couple loops on the open section just for time sake. It’s on the agenda to go back and open up our old spot we used to squeeze thru once the weather warms up. We did see a lot of wildlife on this paddle, 4-5 muskrats playing in the grass and in the water of course, 2 swans, lots of Canadian geese, a few red winged black birds, and last but not least a medium sized grey heron who just looked out of place without all the nice grass for him to hide in.

Saturday we headed over to our regular spot on the Nashua River in Harvard, it was a pleasant surprise when we arrived to the parking lot being wide open, the snow has finally all melted and we were able to park in our regular spot right next to the put in. Walking thru 3-4’ of snow with a canoe is always a great time but I am glad to see its over for another year. There was a pretty good rain/snow/sleet storm on Friday so the river was up nicely and still had a good amount of water pouring into it even as we were paddling along. The one drawback to this gorgeous spot is the fact that Deven’s Army reserve base is on one side of the river. Basically every weekend they run reserves training and with this comes constant rapid gunfire and sometimes larger explosives which sound like bombs or rocket launchers. I like to pretend I am paddling along in a war torn area and often shout commands at Travis to reload and fire at will just to pass the time, he really enjoys this treatment. We were able to make it down to the dam in Ayer pretty quickly and were feeling great to have our regular training spot all thawed out and accessible once again.

Sunday found us on the Millers River again, we went down with the anticipation of paddling with a big group but we put on the water just about 3-5 minutes behind the pack of about 10 boats and were quickly left behind in everyone’s dust. We decided we would work hard to catch up to everyone but each corner we turned it seemed we couldn’t quite catch up. Everyone was pretty well packed up and if you don’t know this already the pack is always faster then a single canoe no matter how hard you push yourself. After the hard work out up to the starting line of the Rat Race in Athol we finally saw the group all resting and getting ready to head back down. We decided that since we chased them the whole way up the river they could chase us down. We made the turn a little ahead of everyone and started a mad dash down stream towards Orange, it wasn’t too bad of an idea actually because the Rat Race is next weekend and what better time to sprint the course then a week before hand. We were finally caught by three boats, all men’s teams, almost at the end of the course which wasn’t too bad at all considering the strong gusting wind that was in our face most of the way down stream. We didn’t get much drafting practice in but we surely got a great speed workout which will only help us in the long run. Its tough work being the rabbit for those speedy mens teams. 

Above are a few shots of the finish line of the Rat Race happening in Athol Ma next weekend. I will try and get lots of pictures of the chaos and post them for your viewing pleasure. You wont believe the difference in the view from this weekend to the race weekend.

9 Weeks Out from the General Clinton 70 Mile Canoe Regatta…

We had a great time in Florida, we met a lot of great new people and had a great time with old friends.  We returned home last week to Monday snow flurries, that was like a slap in the face to say the least.  Last week was a down week for us training wise.  We both were a bit run down from all the paddling in Florida and the travel home, not to mention a good chest cold we both fought all week.  We didn’t get out in the boat during the week due to the combination of the poor weather and not feeling great.  We paddled Saturday on the Nashua River in our recreational canoe (the barge) just to get out in it.  We have The Westfield river race in three weeks and that boat turns really easy and is heavy so it is good to practice in it before we actually race in it.

On Sunday we headed out to the Millers River in Athol.  We got there at 10am it was about 27 degrees by the car thermometer and the parking lot was already full.  I love the Athol Crew!  We started upstream with a group of maybe 6 boats, the infamous Peter Heed with Paul Facteau, The two Jason’s, Brent Lyesik and John Berry, Tom Ellsworth and Carina Peritore, Dennis Carey and Emma Ross.  It was a great crew and there were many others boats on the river practicing for the upcoming Rat Race.  Terese and I did not feel too good, we felt like we didn’t have our normal power or pop.  I think we both still may have had a lot of lactic acid in the muscles, and this being the first hard effort since Florida everything was breaking up.  I had cramps and a general heavy feeling towards the end of the cold paddle.  We managed to stay with the group and had a decent paddle despite the cool breeze (20mph and wind chill in the low twenties).  We are feeling pretty optimistic about our training so far.   We have many more hours than we have ever had this early and I don’t think we have fully absorbed the hard hours from the Florida trip yet. 


 

Here is a video of us popping the boat in some shallow water down in Florida.  We love that shallow water!  Thanks to Devin Arenz for the great videography.

Last long paddle with the group in Florida

Yesterday we returned home from Florida.  The last few days were kind of a blur.  We paddled on Friday on the Wekiva river.  We have been paddling a quite a bit with a group from Minnesota.  On Friday I paddled stern with Ed Arenz and Terese paddled with Todd Johnson.  It was great to have paddled with some new people and I enjoyed being in the stern again. 

We started out on our journey headed up a pretty windy and shallow little stream on rock creek spring, with hopes to make it to the top of the spring. Unfortunately there was not much water in this section of the river so after about a half an hour or so some of the group turned around and headed back down stream, once we noticed we lost a few boats we all turned around as a group and headed down to find them. As we made our way down to the Wekiva River we asked a few other rec paddlers if they had seen anyone go by in similar boat and sure enough lots of people had seen them so we knew we were on the right track, especially since you could really only go two ways up where we were or downstream. We caught up with the boats soon enough and decided to have a quick little snack in the boat. Normally one would think a granola bar or fruit would be ideal but the bow person in my boat Todd, from Minnesota had other plans. He asked that I pull closer to another boat near us so he could use there deck as a table. I wasn’t to sure what he was planning so of course I obliged the request, as we got closer to Christina and Julie, Todd began pulling out all the fixings for a full deli. I have seen a lot of things in my time in the boat but cold cuts packed under a seat hadn’t crossed my mind. After the Minnesotan’s whipped up a few sandwiches and quickly ate we were on our way. That’s the nice thing about being in Florida, lots of different paddlers and all sorts of fun personalities to meet along the way. Knowing this would be our last day on the water with the group I think we all had a little extra silliness in us. We finished out the trip with three and half hours logged in and lots of laughs along the way. We said our goodbyes to the Minnesotans and Jeff, Christina, Betsy, Travis and I made our way more east to Jeff and Susan’s home for one last night in sunny Florida.

We ended out the week with a short paddle on the intercoastal waterway near Jeff's home bringing our total hours for the week up to 29 hours, not bad for a weeks worth of vacationing. Hopefully we make our way back down to Florida and get to paddle with all the great people again soon.

Todd making sandwiches on the boat deck, one of the most interesting things I have seen done in a canoe.

Day Five, The Wiki Wachee River, St. Pattys Day

This river was a perfect run for our St Patty’s Day in Florida, as we put in we came around the first few corners to the most beautiful emerald green waters I have ever seen. This river was pretty, twisty, and turny with lots of very shallow spots which was great for Travis and I. We made our way up to the Spring which fed the river at a very quick pace. Again we left the put in with the intentions of seeing some manatees since we heard that this was a popular hang out for them. We weren’t 15 minutes into the paddle and along came a little baby manatee just leisurely floating down the crystal clear green waters. We moved on pretty quickly since we were on a mission to make it up to the top quickly. There was some new company today, some teenagers from Minnesota had come out and were all paddling these little tiny kayaks. It was great fun talking to them and getting out for a quick swim here and there along the river.  We made it up and down the river in about 2 hours and 40 minutes and decided to stop for some lunch.

After the break we headed back onto the water to a much busier scene, this river was pretty well used, they had kayak and canoe rentals at the top near the spring so we had many “obstacles” along the way. We did a little more playing around with everyone racing up to the top of the river quickly and back down again since time was really getting away from us.  As we were getting closer to the bottom of the run some sunbathers who were hanging out by the rivers edge told us they had just seen a momma and baby manatee float by. Jeff and Julie were ahead of us and were the first to spot the pair, of course we slowed down as soon as we could and floated right over the pair. They were the most graceful looking creatures and just seemed to float down with ease even though the momma was almost as large as one of the canoes. The baby followed closely of course and we even got to see them come up for a few breaths which was an amazing site. One sad thing to see on this beautiful animal was a pretty large scar on top of the mommas back, she had been cut pretty badly by a motor boat at some time in her life. We did see quit a few boats going way to fast on these rivers and apparently the manatees don’t have much sense and they come up for air whenever they need it. We floated along with these gentile giants as long as they were going in the same direction as we were and once they turned we picked up the pace and made our way back down to the put in. I was pretty happy that we had a great encounter with the manatees since I was really looking forward to seeing them basically since I heard we were coming down to paddle in Florida. Another really great paddling experience down in the books as well as 5 hours and 20 minutes added to the logs, this day was work for sure!!!

And now for a little Floridian fun...Ice cream trucks are a dime a dozen in New England but down here in Florida they have ice cream boats!!!!

Day Four: The Homosassas

Today was a “rest” day, this meant only a short paddle for the Wheelers. After the long paddle on day three and what we hear to be a tough day ahead of us on Thursday it seemed like a good idea to take it easy and stretch out the muscles. We put in at Homosassas River and paddled up to the Homosassas Spring hoping to see some manatees, apparently they really love this spot. We saw tons of signs on the way into the city for manatee tours, it seemed that it was almost a guarantee that we would see one but today they were shy or tired and not out for us to bump into. We did however get a great view of some more monkeys, these ones are living on an island close to the put in and to be honest with you I thought they were living the good life, they had a nice little house and tons of ropes to hang out on, who could ask for more??  Just to be clear on our monkey sightings these ones today were old retired circus monkeys so they were not nearly as wild as the ones we saw on the Silver Spring paddle from Day one.

After staring at the monkeys for a good ten minutes we headed out towards the ocean. The river was pretty large, big enough for boats that can handle the ocean of course since we were only a couple miles inland from the Gulf. The group all sort of stuck together and the pace was nice today since it was all the same people from the day before and we were all a little tired. I would like to call this trip our “house shopping” excursion, we paddled thru lots of little canals with many large and medium sized vacation homes and we all schemed and plotted about how we would save our money to buy up a vacation home that could accommodate all of our paddling friends. It was a great distracting conversation from the task at hand which was training of course but before we knew it 2 hours and 20 minutes had already passed and we were back at the put in for lunch. Travis, Betsy and I all headed back to the motel for some relaxing time and the others headed back out to the ocean in hopes of seeing some dolphins along the way.

Day Three, The Chili Run!!!

Day Three was a long paddle day for everyone, the jaunt was deemed the chili run since the goal at the end of the long day would be chili and drinks at Dick Kloss’s home. Dick’s wife, Bert, was at home making veggie chili for all of us which was delicious and had a good spice to it, Yum!!! We started at the Silver Springs river again and made our way onto the Ocklawahai River. It was an early start, 9 am….we are still on vacation of course so this was an early day. The water still had the morning fog hanging over it was almost as if we were paddling into a scene from Gorilla’s in the mist.  We had gone down this river a little bit the first day, but got a lot more exploring in on it this time. We paddled for at least two hours on a nice small winding river, great practice for drafting and turning a whole bunch of canoes on corners at the same time.  As we got further downstream we came to some major dams which sort of caused the water to pool up creating a pretty large swamp. Paddling in the swamp is a pretty interesting thing, you can see for a long ways ahead of you what appears to be clear sailing but as you get into the waters you begin to realize there are giant stumps about every ten feet or so. We had been pretty split up as a group by this point about 4 hours or more into the paddle but we could all easily see the line that everyone was following which was marked by large sign posts for the motor boats. This swamp was filled with lots of beautiful large birds but it was pretty hot with the blazing sun on you so we really worked on getting out of there unfortunately that meant sacrificing the photo taking on this trip. We finished out Day three with 31 miles and 5 hours and 30 minutes added to the logs.

Day Two on the Florida trip

Today we paddled the Rainbow River which was just as pretty as the name would lead you to believe. We had another great turnout boats wise, about 12 to 15 total. We started at another nice put-in which again led up to a beautiful crystal clear 40 to 50 foot deep spring. We weaved our way up stream past some beautiful houses and lots of vacationers for about an hour and forty-five minutes till we arrived at the source of the spring. There was a nice little swimming hole and dock access area at the top of the spring. We saw so many people swimming and sun bathing here so we decided to take a quick dip ourselves. After our refreshing pit stop we headed back to the main put in for some lunch. I noticed along the way that there were tons of kids on this river pretty much free roaming, clearly this was a pretty safe alligator free zone if their parents were letting them float up and down the river in their own dinghy’s and tubes.  

After our lunch rest and re-sunscreen everyone decided it was time to get back in the boats and get in a few more hours. About 6 boats decided to get a little more exploring in on another river which branched off the Rainbow River named the Withachoochee River (spelling is questionable but pretty close to reality, insert any and all dirty jokes here) Travis and I headed back up the Rainbow river with a few other boats we heard that the Rainbow was prettier so decided that was what were going for. We stopped along the way again and took another quick dip in the river, best to get your swimming in where the alligators aren’t hanging out if you know what I mean. While headed back down to the put in we came across a pretty amazing site, a giant heron nest in one of the old cypress trees. This nest had one big momma and four pretty large babies. Momma looked like she was ready to boot those mature babies out of their comfy nesting spot.    

We finished out the day with 23 miles in and about 4 hours and 40 minutes, the pace was quick and a few paddlers were a little feisty so that made the whole trip just fly by. Good drafting and great conversion up and down the river once again. I could get used to this lifestyle J

Finally caught a close up of these awesome birds I've been seeing everywhere. They are beautiful!