Mariana, Isaac and I went for a canoe trip down the Muscatatuck river today. Carolyn dropped us off and picked us up. The Muscatatuck river is a small river about 30 miles north of Madison. We put in at an overpass in a farm field, and took out at another overpass 13-1/2 miles downstream. It took us about 6-1/2 hours to make the trip. In a normal year, we wouldn't have been able to do this so late in the summer, but this year has been pretty wet so the water was still high enough. We wound back and forth between farm fields for most of the trip, though you usually couldn't tell because there was a thin screen of trees along the river bank. The challenging portion of the trip was all of the logs and trees in the river. We had to be constantly on the lookout for submerged logs. In two places we had to drag the canoe across or through big log-jams. In one place we were able to squeeze through underneath a log by laying down in the canoe. We saw lots of wildlife-- great blue herons, geese and ducks, turtles and muskrats, and even one deer that swam across the river in front of us.
We had a great time, and Isaac is looking forward to the scout canoe trip August 7. Mariana is lobbying for another trip for her birthday.
4 comments:
Wow! that looks like Fun! Did you know the river went all that way or were you just hoping and assuming?
We carefully scouted the whole thing out beforehand. A couple of saturdays ago, we drove around to the put-in and take-out sites, guided by information on the Indiana Department of Natural Resources web site. Then we printed out topographical maps of the area and looked at satellite images of the whole route using Google maps. Another Indiana DNR web site posts the water flow and depth, and we watched that very carefully to make sure the water depth would be OK.
What an awesome trip! Sounds like you were very prepared. You know you couldn't have done it without Carolyn. The drop-off and pick up person is after all the most important job of the trip.
Anette,
You are very right about Carolyn being the key to the success of this trip. She was very kind to drop us off and pick us up and go home and do Isaac's paper route in between. We plan to take the canoe to a lake so that Carolyn can get a chance to enjoy it as well.
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