Anniversary #42--Still Paddling Together

Thursday, August 29, 2013

We have had a really wonderful and memorable anniversary today! We woke up to haze and wondered whether it would really be kayaking weather, but it was all burned off by mid-morning. We went directly to Locks 2&3 of the Seneca-Cayuga Canal. We were the only ones there besides the lockmaster. We pumped up our kayak and dropped it into Van Cleef Lake right in front of the locks. We paddled a little bit, then called up the Lockmaster on my cell phone and said, “Drop us down, please!” There is a 49-foot difference between the height of the lake and the canal below.

Our view of the lock gates--Samantha is in the background

Soon enough, the doors of the lock slowly opened and we paddled into Lock #3. We used a bungee cord to tie the kayak against the wall so we wouldn’t drift around inside the lock while the water level went down. It took about 10 minutes or so—we watched the walls go higher and higher above us. It is a much different feeling in a kayak than it was in the boat in Lockport—we are really just sitting on the surface of the water. It was very cool!

Joe taking the bungee off the rope after we dropped down

We head toward the open doors--another boat is waiting to take our place in the opposite direction

When the lock opened, we saw that there was a boat in Lock #2. He very slowly moved in next to us as we paddled past him, and we switched places. Then we tied up again, and were lowered down to the level of the canal. The doors opened again and out we paddled, past yet another boat and some folks fishing on the side of the canal just past the lock. More paddling, and we were completely alone on the canal—there was just nature on either side. One more boat did pass us going toward the locks, and we moved out of its way and waited for it to go by. Then we kept going downstream. We found a stream flowing into the lock and went in to explore it a little bit, and we saw a huge bird (I think it was a heron) which flew over the water and landed in a tree, posing for me so I could take its photo. It was SO QUIET out there, and we spent a lot of time just floating there drinking in the solitude. Totally lovely!

We finally went back to the lock, and had to wait a bit before the doors opened—when we called, the Lockmaster told us he had a boat coming toward him on the other side, and he was going to drop that boat down to meet us. Sure enough, the gates finally opened, we paddled in (such a cool feeling to paddle into the lock!) and when we got up to the next level, there was a largish boat coming toward us. Again we passed each other carefully before we finished our rise back up to the lake level. Then we paddled back to the dock and pulled ourselves and our kayak up onto it. Wow! What an experience!!

We were hungry after that (it was 1:30 pm) and also Joe had to make a few phone calls. So it wasn’t until around 3pm that we started driving. We really had no idea where we were headed exactly, only “east” was pretty much it! So we got back on Route 20, the road which had taken us through the northern end of the long Finger Lakes. I looked for a campground that was about halfway to Caroga Lake, where we have reservations for Friday and Saturday night. On the way we stopped in Skaneateles, a charming town right on the northern tip if the lake of the same name, and enjoyed the waterfront a little bit. 

We drove on from there, now heading to Oneida Lake State Park. On the way we passed right by Chittenango State Park. I knew there was a nice waterfall there, so we pulled in. Sure enough, the waterfall was GORGEOUS. The park overlook was at the top, so we (including Roxy) hiked the quarter-mile down a steep path to see it from the bottom as well. It was really beautiful.

From there it was only 20 miles to Oneida Lake. There are only 48 campsites here, but we were so lucky—we got one just off the shore of the lake.  It was already after 7:00, and we sat on a bench at the lakeside watching the sun set. There was a lovely breeze and we just enjoyed the view and the sailboats in the distance until the sun completely disappeared. It was the perfect end to a very special and memorable anniversary day.

 

Our campsite. The lake is right beyond the trees.

"Horizontal Bouldering"

Kayakers on the Genesee River

Saturday, Aug. 24, 2013  

We started today early, and made it up to the Stone Tool Show at about 10:30. The show was kind of interesting, but somehow neither Joe nor I really “got it”. It was, first of all, a gathering of flint-knappers. I understand the idea of the craft, but when all is said and done, there is not a lot you can make with flint. As craftspeople, these folks tow around trucks full of rocks—this has GOT to be seriously un-fun to load, unload, and set up! They did demos of flint-knapping, and they were all, every one of them, selling stone arrowhead pendants. I assume some people are more skilled than others, but when you come down to it, every arrowhead looks pretty much like every other arrowhead. I can’t really imagine doing the same thing over and over and coming out with pretty much an identical result. And yet they are quite passionate about it—this particular gathering was of the Genesee Valley Flint Knappers. Are there other chapters? And what in the world happens to all these arrowheads? I mean, hardly anyone hunts with them anymore. Like I said, we just didn’t “get it.” I was amused, however, by one booth, with a banner proclaiming "www.FlintKnappingTools.com." The most ancient of technologies married to the most recent.

There were other craftspeople there, and we saw items carved from bone, tools to do flint-knapping, a guy throwing a hatchet (into a target, not anyone’s neck, thank goodness), jewelry, more arrows and arrowheads, some weaving, some leatherwork, and the atl-atl demonstration. What else…. Honey, some pottery, and one booth full of books on geology of all over the country. This was the place for rock enthusiasts.  Finally, there was a “mountain man encampment” of lean-to tents, wrought iron tools, and fire pits. Some folks were in period costume to go along with their mountain man camp. But all in all, we were a little puzzled by it all—somehow, none of this spoke to us. We marveled at how one person's passion can just leave another person completely disinterested. I am sure for the folks who were there with their booths and demonstrations, they were looking forward to this gathering all year.

We headed down the mountain to the rafting building so we’d have some time for lunch before our kayak excursion down the Genesee River Gorge in the park. We had lunch at the small restaurant nearby—we almost never do this, but I had a sudden craving for a well-done snack bar style hamburger, LOL!  And then we just relaxed until it was time to meet the other kayakers. There were about 30 of us, plus 3-4 guides. We got flotation vests (hard to imagine needing one, since the river was VERY low) and a little safety lecture, before heading down the road to the put-in point.

We each had our own kayak—inflatables like ours, but smaller than the one Joe and I own, and we were sitting higher up on it. As soon as we started downstream, we immediately hit a small rapids area. At least half the group promptly got stuck on the rocks.  I discovered that the real difficulty with the exercise was not about paddling through the rapids—it was having so many people in a group doing it at the same time. More than once I would be getting up speed to shoot through, only to have the person in front of me get stuck. I would bang into him/her, and end up either just log-jammed there, or stuck on my own rock as a result. The other danger was the reverse—I would hang up on a rock, and while I was spinning myself off it, someone would slam into me and drive me back up on it. Most of the time when I got stuck, it was because of a collision with another kayak.

The river had numerous rapids, separated by quiet areas where those who were through would wait for the folks who were stuck. It was both a lot of fun and very funny at the same time. Although one time I was not amused a bit—I was just getting off a rock (I wasn’t really stuck there, just spinning free) when someone came up behind me, yelled “Oh no, I’m going to tip you over!” and then proceeded to do pretty much just that. She shoved me onto my side and shot past me. I hung there for almost a minute, maybe longer, with the river (which was actually quite fast at that point, because another stream had joined the main river) flowing OVER me, through my kayak, and me hanging there trying to right the kayak and NOT to fall out of it. I did see one guy flip over—the river was too fast for him to stand up safely, even though it is not very deep.  I whooshed past him and didn’t see how he got back in.  As a result of the number of rocky spots and the relative shallowness of the water, Joey suggested that what we were doing was essentially “horizontal bouldering” rather than actual kayaking.  It did seem that we spent an inordinate amount of time on top of rocks rather than on the water!

We stopped at a halfway point for some juice and cookies. Joe was already really tired—he’d gotten stuck at one point and instead of rocking himself free, he’d been trying to paddle with the water to get going again. Doing it that way is great, if you don’t exhaust yourself trying. We had a nice rest, and then went on.  About 20 minutes later we stopped again to look at a beautiful waterfall coming into the river from Wolf Creek. The fall was quite large and high, and is only visible from the river gorge, not from any overlooks. (Unfortunately I didn’t have a waterproof camera, so I took no photos during the trip. But fortunately the day before, we’d seen a kayak group go past us while we were up on an overlook. I took a lot of photos, thinking that it would show us what we looked like and illustrate this blog!)  There is a pool at the bottom, as well as a deep hole which several people jumped into.  Definitely a big bonus for the kayaking, to see something that beautiful. 

When we left the waterfall, we immediately hit a large rapids area (fed by Wolf Creek added to the Genesee) and that was pretty intense. At the bottom though, I turned around (I did a lot of that, not always on purpose!) and looked back, as per the guide’s recommendation. The view of the gorge walls with the late afternoon light on them just at the bend in the river there was simply gorgeous.

After that we floated pretty quietly beneath the walls for another 10-15 minutes, just resting and looking at the scenery. It was simply wonderful.  We finally reached the take-out point and a bus took us back to the office, where we shed our vests and stumbled, soaking wet and totally exhausted, into the RV. We had paddled for 5 miles down the river, pretty much non-stop for 3 hours and having to paddle almost the entire time (the current was not fast enough to just let us float, except of course at the rapids, where “just floating” was not an option.) We were chilled from the wet clothes (although the river itself was not very cold at all) and Joe and I were too tired to move…. We just crashed (although we did make some tea to heat ourselves up, too.) The RV was quite warm when we got in, which was much appreciated.  It was at least an hour before we felt able to drag ourselves up and drive to the RV campground where we were planning to spend the night. We stayed at a very pretty family campground, quite full of children on bikes, karaoke near the office, and lots of people and RVs everywhere, but we did not care. We knew we would have NO TROUBLE sleeping!

Sunday, Aug. 25, 2013

Guess who is still tired from kayaking? We spent the first half of the day at the campground, just relaxing and letting our wet clothes from the kayak trip dry in the sunshine. Around 2pm or so we finally packed up and drove 32 miles to Darien Lake State Park, which is where we are now. The campground is about half full and pretty nice, although not as wooded as Letchworth was. It is on much flatter ground—in fact the scenery getting here was rolling farmland. But the good news is, we have 4G cellular again, so I can catch up with my blogging. Tomorrow our plans are to go up toward the Niagara Falls area, although we are not planning to go to see the falls (not a good area for an RV—too much congestion!) We have a couple of other things planned instead, which we are looking forward to.

Taughannock Falls State Park

Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2013

A busy and lovely day at Taughannock State Park! We drove down to the main area of the park, right on Cayuga Lake, and found an rv-sized parking spot next to the boat launch.  There was even a little bit of shade! Then we headed up the Gorge Trail to Taughannock Falls with Roxy (always so nice when dogs are allowed to join their people!) The path was very easy—no elevation, wide and shady. The final cascade of the Taughannock Creek is right near the road, so we stopped to admire it.

Lower Taughannock Falls

Continuing along the path, it was obvious that the creek was pretty low at this time of year. A lot of the creek bed was dry, and the temptation to walk alongside or even in the water was irresistible to most of the folks following the trail.  We too went into the creek, where Roxy had a drink. 

After a bit, we opted for the shadier path, and got out of the creek channel. The views were still lovely, and it was fun watching the families with small children making their way up through the water. What a great hike for little kids! 

We finally arrived at the base of Taughannock Falls, which we’d seen from the upper overlook yesterday. It is really awesome and beautiful! We walked across the wooden bridge to the other side of the river (Roxy did NOT like the bridge but followed when I led the way and we encouraged her) and spent about 20 minutes just taking photos and looking up at the rock walls. There are interpretive panels all along the river and we enjoyed reading those too.

Close-up: Top of Falls

We finally headed back—the walk back to the RV was a lot quicker than the walk to the falls, because we didn’t  stop for as many photos and panels (plus we stayed out of the water!) We got back to Samantha at 1:00, just in time for lunch.

After eating, relaxing and reading for a little while, it was time for the next big attraction of the park, Cayuga Lake itself. We pumped up our inflatable kayak and walked over to the boat launch which was just a few yards away. How easy! We were out on the lake for about 90 minutes. The park has a beach for swimming, and several launch areas. Folks were also fishing, and we got a kick out of one guy with two black dogs (part lab, both of them.) They were on a jetty fishing, but then he literally picked them both up and tossed them into the water, jumping in after them himself! A few minutes later they all scrambled out onto the rocks and were back on the jetty shaking themselves off. So cute! It is nice to be in a dog-friendly place.

Pointing our kayak toward Cayuga Lake

We were not very energetic, although we paddled all up and down the shore of near our launch site. We also paddled up the river to where it became quite shallow—we could see the base of the falls (the ones near the road, that is) before we turned around. Cayuga Lake was very calm and quiet—there was no wind, and when we didn’t paddle, we just floated right in place quietly. It was VERY relaxing!

We got back to Samantha at about 4:30, and although I was tempted to swim after that (I was hot!), Joey wasn’t in the mood. So instead we decided to head up the road to our next destination, Sampson State park. We stopped at Cayuga Lake Creamery (our ice cream destination yesterday) for a reprise of our respective chocolate ice creams. Roxy got lucky too—I noticed today that they sell a “Doggie Sundae”!  For years Joey has occasionally bought a small vanilla cup for his dogs, and a special sundae topped with a dog biscuit was too cute to resist. Roxy loved the ice cream, but we were not that surprised when she had no interest in the biscuit…. She is simply not a dog-biscuit fan!

From there, it was a short trip to Sampson State Park, on Seneca Lake. The park is quite large, occupying the site of a World War II naval training station. There is a big campground, a marina, a military museum, and of course the lake with trails and bike rentals.  No waterfalls this time, so we are on the shore of the lake, and fairly flat for a change. The shower facilities are nicer than the one at Watkins Glen, and we both took long hot showers tonight, which was lovely. We had a delish steak and salad for dinner.  The campground also has electrical hookups, which is a nice change—we can use real lights instead of flashlights and we don’t have to conserve our power. In fact, I am recharging everything to the max! So we are feeling pretty pampered right now. We will hang around here tomorrow and play a little bit, and decide where to go next. I have no idea yet.