Yakity Yak: Trip Four: East Canada Creek, Southern Adirondacks

A busy weekend! Saturday Joe and I drove down to my hometown to help my baby Brother, Bren celebrate his high school graduation.  Bren has grown up into such a nice and sweet young man with a whole world of promise laying before him. He will be heading to community college in the Fall to get a 2 year associates degree in computer science. So proud of him!!









It turned out to be a Gorgeous day on Sunday so Joe and I packed up the kayaks again and headed north again on Route 8.

This process keeps getting easier and quicker the more we do it. Lots of straps and bungees, and then all the another doodads for the back seat like our plastic bins filled with bug spray, sunscreen, paddle leashes, our life jackets etc etc.  The worst part is unpacking them at the location because it never fails. It is always so stinkin' buggy. 

Anyway, we headed up to the Adirondack Park.... I made Joe stop and turn around so I could get a shot of this cool sign.

We were following some directions from our Adirondack paddling book, and drove into Speculator and out of Speculator looking for Route 10. Unfortunately we drove in the wrong direction for about 15 miles and had to back track back to Speculator and then back outside of town again where we finally found the route 10. Even after all of that we still had about 8 miles to go on  a seasonal highway. But we finally made it to the iron bridge where we dropped in.

My flip flops got completely sucked into the mud as I got my boat in the water, making it extra challenging to get into the boat. The deer flies were the worst here. Absolutely swarming with them.  Something about me really attracts the bugs.

It must have been the season for these beauties to hatch because the area we were in- there were hundreds of them! I caught this one taking a rest on my kayak. So pretty!

We were on our way.  The trip was supposed to be about 2 miles up and 2 miles back. We actually went in the wrong direction going downstream instead of upstream so we went quite a ways until the water got a little rougher, and then turned around to back to the bridge. On the way down though, we went through the area of a partially built beaver dam. As we approached it, you could see the water flowing pretty quickly down through the center. We eased through it and as soon as we got through it my first thought was.  Shit.  We're gonna have to back up through this. I knew it wasn't going to be easy.

I said to Joe "Umm honey? how are we going to get back through that!? " and his answer to me all nonchalant like- " we'll just have to get a running start" .  And so, we get back to this spot and about 20 feet we start paddling like Hell. I was right behind him and he got to the center of it, and it stopped him dead- and I plowed into the back of him. We backed it up and he tried again, making it through by going in at an angle.

The problem was, the dam caused the water in that center section to be so shallow that we you got the boat up into it there was hardly any water to keep paddling through. It took me FOUR tries.  Joe was watching from ahead, - my own person cheerleader.  I keep backing back down it, and FINALLY I got past the point so that my paddles could help the boat up through it but I have never worked so hard. After that I was BEAT. 

The views were lovely. The meandering river had a pretty easy flow, and it wasn't too hard going back up stream which I was grateful for. We went back under the bridge and continued up stream but only for about 1/4 of a mile and then we hit 2 more fully executed beaver dams, so we headed back.

The deer flies thwarted my attempts at finding my heart shaped rock on this trip.  I fell asleep on the way home.  So far nothing beats the last trip (Trip 3, the Moose River trip)