Allegheny Kayaking Part 2

Day 3: Sat 9/12

Saturday was our first full day of paddling. The reservoir is long and skinny with a fork at the south end. If you're camped midway down as we were, there are basically three paddles to do: head north towards New York, head south down the fork towards the dam, or head south down the other fork. Today we decided to head for the dam, aiming to get in 15 miles, the attainment of which was a Really Big Deal. 

Getting ready to launch

We launched 9:30ish and got a good start down the reservoir. As we were passing the fork point I spotted a power boat off to our right, gradually turning left. At first I thought he was heading for the marina located just into the other fork, but he kept going slowly and turning as if he was aiming at us. Was he a threat - perhaps someone who either didn't see us or thought it would be fun to cause us a little excitement? Finally, as he got close to us I could see that he was maneuvering to come alongside us. Jen and I were the closest to him, and he called out to us, asking if anyone in our group had lost a set of car keys to a Toyota Highlander. At first I was going to say no, since no one in the group drives a Highlander but then I remembered that Rob had just replaced his trusty old Subaru with ... a Toyota Highlander. I told the boat guy that we did indeed have a Highlander driver in the group and vectored him over to Rob who (as is typical) was a little bit away from the group exploring the shore. Rob didn't have a radio on him so I radioed Suzanne, who was near him, to tell him to hold tight. The motorboat guy made his way over to Rob and sure enough, they were Rob's car keys! This left us all speechless in so many ways - that Rob's car keys had been missing for a day and he hadn't realized it, that the marina folks were good enough to track the group down (they had also left a note on his windshield, we discovered later), and perhaps craziest of all, that he found us out on the water. In a 27 mile long, 7,500 acre reservoir we were six kayak-sized needles in a haystack - but he found us! It turned out that motorboat guy (whose name, we learned, was Ed) is the husband of the woman (Barb) who sold us our parking permits when we checked in at Willow Bay and he takes care of going around and checking on the campgrounds - resupplying the pit toilets, collecting the money, and I guess delivering car keys!     

Rob gets his car keys back

Amazed at our good luck, we continued on down to the dam, where we pulled up on shore and had lunch. We spotted a cell tower on a mountaintop and sure enough, the Verizon phones had service. My ATT&T phone did not. This just proves that cell phone coverage maps are pure fiction, since the Verizon map showed no coverage in the area while the AT&T map looked much better. Suzanne tried to send a text to Valerie to let her know I was alive and well, but she attached a picture to it, which caused the transmission to fail - so Valerie didn't get it until the next time we had service, the following day.

Rob eating lunch by the dam

Those dam kayakers eating lunch and checking their phones for service

Stopping along the way to check out Pine Grove campground

On the paddle back we said we'd take a little detour and look at the marina in the other fork, joking that we'd hop out and pick up some cold beer. More seriously, we expected that the marina - or certainly any concessions - would be closed up tight after Labor Day, but the day had some more amazing good luck in store for us. Rob went up on shore and found the little restaurant attached to the marina was open - and sold beer! He returned with two six packs and enough ice to keep the beer cold during the rest of our trip back to the campsite.

The weather kicked up as we continued back - not surprising, as a front bringing overnight rain was in the forecast -  and we hit some pretty good chop as we paddled. Once back at the campsite we set to work putting up tarps to give us shelter from the rain. Rob (whose kayak is legendarily bottomless) had found room to bring along a 10 x 20 foot tarp, which he erected with a large number of guy lines and poles. Along with Suzanne's smaller tarp, it turned our campsite into a total spiderweb. I must say, I wasn't much help in putting up the tarps. I was exhausted when we got back and I had to rest for a little bit - and I timed it perfectly. I was collapsed in my tent while Rob did all the hard work, but emerged just in time to add on one or two guy lines, giving me the right to claim to have taken part in erecting the tarp (the next day I earned a little more legit cred by taking the lead in repairing the tarp's leaky spots with tape).

Campsite

Campsite from the beach

Spiderweb of tarp lines

After we were all done battening down the campsites we collected on the beach for a Cold Beer Happy Hour! We had stopped at one of the reservoir's other campsites on the way down (totally vacant, and not as nice as where we were staying) where we found and appropriated  some firewood, so after separately preparing our meals we had dinner together and made a nice bonfire on the beach.   

Cold Beer!

Happy Hour on the beach

Day 4: Sun 9/13

Sunday’s weather was true to the dismal forecast. The rain didn't arrive until early morning, but when it rolled in at around 5:30 whomever was awake - possibly all six of us - simultaneously thought, “Darn, I wish I had gotten up five minutes ago to pee!”. It was an oddly ever-changing, intermittent rain, sometimes barely misting, sometimes drenching, sometimes light, as if every five minutes the weather gods rolled the dice anew in terms of how heavy to make the weather. Fortunately, it wasn’t very cold out, for there’s little as unpleasant as being stuck out in cold rain - and there were enough periods when it let up that we could actually be out and about a little among the campsites.

Meanwhile, it being the end of the weekend and rainy, most of the other occupants of the campground packed up and left, so we expanded into a third campsite. Suzanne is a light sleeper and her sleep had been disturbed by Rob's and my nighttime noises (rolling over, getting out of our tents, and so on) and so she moved her tent from our shared campsite to what had been the kayak fishermen’s campsite so she could sleep in peace. Her tarp was so impeccably rigged where it was that she left it and her cooking gear in place rather than try to disassemble and reconstruct its complexity at her new site.

The morning was spent just relaxing, checking out each other’s camp craft, fussing with water filtering, discussing politics (something we had vowed not to do - though we knew there was no way we’d make good on that vow) and hoping for the rain to move out sooner rather than later (the forecast said clearing over the course of the afternoon).

We got a break when the rain moved out mid-day and in the afternoon we went for a hike. One of the reasons we had chosen to camp where we did was that the campgrounds connected to a hiking trail system, and we picked out a nice six mile loop hike. The rain had left behind an intense humidity, and we all sweated and went through whatever water we had brought with us as the trail climbed up to a high ridge then back down. At the highest point of our hike we all pulled out our cell phones (checking for cell service was a ritual whenever we stopped) and sure enough, all of us had service! I called home and talked to an agitated Valerie, upset because our air conditioning system had once again started leaking into the basement, which certainly threw cold water on my spirits. 

Hiking

That evening I indulged in my one packaged dinner: a pouch of Indian food (dahl curry) mixed with a pouch of mixed ancient grains. After the previous night's lackluster dinner it tasted really good, but there was a lot of it. When you're camping you sometimes engage in food safety practices a little more lax than what you would do at home. I packed up the leftovers in my Thermos to save (without refrigeration) for the next day's lunch.

Day 5: Mon 9/14

My day started with being awakened by the sound of Suzanne cooking breakfast. Apparently she had woken up at 5:30 and had made her way over to our site at about 6, at which point Rob and I were still asleep, and shortly thereafter began cooking. 

Speaking of Suzanne, before the trip she had gleaned a lot of very useful information by calling the ranger station, including learning about a campground on the other fork of the reservoir that was built on an abandoned orchard, with apples and grapes still growing wild there. Envisioning an unspoiled Eden teeming with fruit, we decided to make it our destination for the day. The trip there was about eight miles, and we were helped again by a push from the wind. There was one couple camped at the campground and they steered us to where the fruit trees were, but the fruit was a disappointment; there were few apples, and those that were there were out of reach or not ripe. Likewise, most of the grapes were small and seedy. While most of us returned from our fruit search empty-handed, Jen, using some sort of farm girl cunning, found both a nice red apple to eat and some nice grapes. I didn’t get a chance to try any grapes, since when she was offering them around I was on the phone with Valerie getting caught up on the basement flooding issue - Valerie had decided to treat the symptoms but leave finding a cure to me upon my return.

Most mornings started with a beautiful fog over the water

On the way back we decided to stop again at the marina where we had found beer, with visions in our heads of obtaining a restaurant meal - in fact, there had been a lot of fantasizing about burgers at the marina since our first visit. Well, all of us were interested in restaurant food except Tall Tom, who broke off from the group and instead went to explore a public park (which he reported was very nice). Alas, our luck had run out - the day we had bought beer turned out to have been the restaurant's last day for the season. The place was closed up tight. Instead, we sat down on the (closed for the season) boat ramp to eat the lunches we had brought along. After a bit two young guys described by the more charitable among us as being like characters out of a Steinbeck novel (the less charitable among us referenced Deliverance) ambled down the ramp, a Mutt and Jeff pair - one tall and rangy with bright red hair, the other short and obese and dressed in camo gear, with a long braided ponytail. After eyeballing us a little they sat down on the ramp and smoked cigarettes. Not long thereafter a boat came by with two fishermen - clearly people they knew - who asked if they wanted to go fish from the boat. The redheaded guy was super excited, telling us, “I’m 22 years old and I’ve never been in a boat before!” He also volunteered to us that he’s a big fan of hunting. When he shoots a noble animal, he told us, he places his hand on its heart to honor it, and he doesn’t waste anything - he even uses the animal's bones to make things. I am not a hunter but pulled out what little I knew to manage a conversation, asking him if he ever bow-hunted. Drawing upon a well of deep belief that I made up on the spot, I opined that it was the purest form of hunting since it was more of an even match between hunter and prey. He wholeheartedly agreed and added that's why he likes hunting with muzzle loaders as well. I thought to myself, "Faking being a redneck test passed!" Camo guy was less talkative, but they both turned out to be quite friendly.

The guys on the boat were very friendly too. We chatted about what they were catching (walleye, bass, pike, but never carp - for some reason they disdain carp). They asked if we were out hunting, since several of us were in high visibility orange. We said no, just paddling and camping. Once again drawing on my deep well of hunting knowledge (I had looked this up before we left for the trip) I noted that it was squirrel season, and I wasn't into hunting critters. Boat guy nodded. I thought to myself, "Faking being a redneck test part 2 passed!" 

The paddle back turned into a slog as the wind picked up (why is it that every trip report seems to contain this sentence?) - 20 MPH gusting to 30, we estimated, with waves building to about 1.5 ft. Paddling into the wind in these conditions wasn't dangerous, but the push backwards from the wind and waves makes you feel like you're paddling on a treadmill. I was glad I had decided to don my elbow braces - after long periods of clenching the paddle and paddling hard I start to get pain in my elbows. Tom radioed when he got back to camp and that he was monitoring the VHF in case we needed anything. He's got a strong safety focus even when he's in the mood for solitude.

The nicest sunset of the trip

We were fixin' to break camp early the next morning and head back to the cars and so in the evening  we partially disassembling camp - we took down tarps and packed a few things. For dinner I just scrounged from among my leftover food rather than cooking, resulting in a delicious dinner of cheese, vegan jerky and crackers, carrots, granola, and for dessert, coffee and Fig Newtons.

At bedtime we prepped for what was going to be the coldest night of the trip, colder than we had expected from the advance forecast, with temps down into the 30's and a frost warning in effect.

Campfire photos