Well Epic Canoe Trip 2009 was pretty great. Chad and I were the only ones launching at Buckaloons. I had a broken hand so Chad paddled me down the river the first day. The water was moving fast and we saw some cool sights, but by the time I would get to the camera we had already zoomed by them. Time for a waterproof camera. We did manage to chase a herring for a bit, and then see a bank cover with like 15 turtles. Most of them got in water before I got the camera out.
The water was moving so fast that we reached the island in 4 hours without hardly even paddling.
JR and Shawn met us near the island in a motor boat and floated to the first island with us. They hung out for a bit while we setup camp and started cooking. They had things to do in the morning so the took off before dinner.
Chad taught me how to play Cribbage and we had good time catching up on what felt like years worth of stuff since we had last talked.
I had the Life Saver Bottle this year, which meant no hauling water and weighing down the canoe. Chad figured out how to make it run so he could chug 750ml at a time. :) In the morning Chad made an awesome breakfast and then we packed up and headed to the Tidiute boat launch to swap Chad for Joe and Matt. We showed up at the launch right as about 30 boats with lots of beer launched into the river.
We had this drunk floatilla in orbit around for a couple of hours. You could smell the alcohol with 100ft of them. It was bad. They were loud and rowdy and here they are already stopping to pee after being on the water only 30 minutes or so. These guys were already buzzing cause they turned right towards us a let rip.
It started raining after a while and so we pulled up under a bridge to wait it out. Joe says you can sit in the eddy of the pillar if you get in there. I was impressed for a bit until I realized he was holding a stick under water to hold us there. He ended holding it with his foot so he could "talk" (he claims he can't tell a story without his hands). After checking out big nasty spiders under the bridge we headed on down to Tionesta. We shot the rapids and did some freestyle canoeing, slaloming downed trees and rocks and things like that. We got to Tionesta and bought some food and it was still on 3pm. Since there was only 3 of us we decided to keep going rather then stay at Millipede island. We looked at the GPS and saw some other islands about 2 hrs down river that looked good and off we went. We stopped at a couple islands along the way before finding one that had nice tree clusters for hammocks and some decent firewood. By this point it was raining pretty steady and starting to get dark. We started gathing sticks and cleaning up a camp spot and we hung a tarp to get out of the rain. This is when we realized that my light was rusted up and out of fluid and the Matts matches were soaked.
Joe found a big solid piece of rotten tree, and Matt found some burlap mixed in vasoline for flint that was in his pack. Joe put the burlap mixture on the piece of log and we got a bunch of wet, but very small sticks broke up for him. After trying a few of the wet matches, Joe finally got one to light. So with one match, we lit this nice fire. It was sketchy for a bit as we waited for the sticks to dry then burn. A little bug spray helped it along. :) Finally we had a good fire burning and drying clothes. EPIC!!Sunday morning brought high humidity as the sun tried to bake of the rain from the night before. The extra paddling on Saturday paid off and we were to Oleopolus by 10:30-11am before it had a chance to get really hot and muggy.
All in all the small group was fun. It gave old friends a chance to catch up. We still had some epic times, and managed to make it fast, but relaxing run down the river.
We are thinking for 2010, everyone should solo (2010, SOLO see it just has to be). So if you have been waiting for an excuse to buy a kayake, this is it!
Thanks guys for carrying me down the river!! I had a good time! 12 years of Epic!
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