Trip Report, 25 May 2019, Rock River
Expecting early morning rain, I left home at 08:20 in sun shine with scattered clouds. As I drove the clouds filled in, and light rain began falling as I passed Castle Rock State Park.
It began raining hard as I waited for others to show at East Park in Oregon. It was raining as if the sky was falling when Jeff arrived and parked next to me. I got noticeably wet moving five feet from my left door to his right door. Lars was next, and parked in an open spot several places past my truck farther from Jeff’s vehicle. Dick was last to arrive, and parked to the left of Jeff, and joined us in the SUV. I called Lars’ cell, and he joined us during a let up in the rain.
From Radar maps on a smart phone we determined that the rain would pass us in just under an hour, and there were no more storms to the west. After a few false breaks in the rain it stopped about 10:00 and we unloaded the boats and gear. Jeff, Lars, and I drove to Lowell park, and left My truck and Jeff’s SUV as those were the vehicles with racks for extra boats.
The water was high, and we launched in an area that is dry land with normal water, and was out of the current. A brisk West wind still make launching difficult enough that I would have had trouble in those conditions when I started paddling about a decade ago.
Entering the current, I angled a bit up stream, and when the current caught the bow, the boat turned sharply down stream, and I had a good line toward the bridge. The channel is narrow there, and paddling just fast enough to steer, I saw a maximum recorded speed over seven miles per hour.
Going down stream past the first islands, we saw a group of American White Pelicans to the right of our course. We turned toward them, and they moved a few meters to the North as we passed south of them. There were between fifty and sixty bird in that flock.
With the high fast water, there were eddies and cross currents in areas that are very un-challenging with normal water, but we continued moving rather fast with minimum paddling. For our lunch stop at Castle Rock, we landed about half way up the normally dry portion of the boat launch ramp. The ramp was closed, and the access drive barricaded so we left the boats there since no one else was using the ramp.
We saw the eagle nest on the island just before we reached the big open area above the camping island. There was an adult bald eagle perched on the edge of the nest on the upstream side. Most of the wild life we saw were birds, eagles, pelicans, vultures, herons, Eastern King Birds, and other small birds I did not get close enough to identify. Jeff and I saw a few medium size turtles at one place when Lars and Dick were a bit ahead of us.
We saw no, zero, motor boats on the river while we were paddling.
In spite of a late start and a leisurely lunch, we landed at Lowell park at 16:20 averaging just over five miles per hour for the trip. By the last half of the trip, the sun was out, and it was warm enough that I would have been more comfortable if I had taken my nylon spray skirt instead of the neoprene one. I also got a slight sun burn on my arms.
After returning to Oregon and transferring Dick’s and Lars’ boats and gear to their own vehicles, we stopped at Dairy Queen, and I replaced all the calories I burned on the river.
It was a good trip after the early weather delay.
See you on the river,Tom aka Harry
