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Riding the St. Joe...A Kayak Adventure!
The weekend was mine, I was scheduled to be off and was truly looking forward to the free time. Life has been hectic lately, the Lazy Hayes Days, work, life in general....no free time to speak of and it was dragging on my nerves, but this weekend was mine and I was ready for some kayaking adventures! KAboom had all the gear ready, we made all the plans for the fun day of paddling a section of the St. Joseph river which winds through Hillsdale County. Having passed by this section several times on our travels to Hillsdale, we could see it was fairly lazy and very wide...just what the doctor ordered! We were excited about this and talked about placing a few caches if we found some nice locations. Morning came, we ate a quick breakfast, packed a nice lunch and plenty of water then loaded the kayaks onto the Jeep, we were ready to go at our planned time to get us to the river for a 10am starting time! The drive, about a half hour SW of my home location gave us time to anticipate the fun ahead, plans of spending the entire day on the river really had us excited! We arrived, unloaded, packed the kayaks and, donning our PFDs, we were on the river at 10am, right on time!
Now, after our first river experience, we decided upstream was in order for this trip, we could then lazily float back when we wore ourselves out, so upstream we paddled against the slow current! The river was a bit different than I had envisioned, it was very wide and had a lot of grasses and such growing right up to the bank, along with some nice water Irises, their yellow flowers drew me in for a closer look a few times! The river was also a bit shallower than I had expected, but had a very sandy bottom so we had little trouble with the upstream paddling and soon found ourselves enjoying the views and nature in general!
At one point, a vulture seemed to be considering whether we'd make it or not, we fooled him!
After about 2 hours, we found the river had narrowed significantly enough to not allow us to enjoy ourselves, we were barely given room to paddle since it was now just wider than the paddles are long! We'd passed at least two splits in the river, each time making the river narrower! We'd finally come to a spot where we couldn't make it past the current, and wouldn't you know, right under a wooden footbridge! End of the line for us, we decided we'd stop here for snacks and a break!
KAboom holding onto the bridge:
The view from the footbridge, notice how narrow the river is at this point!
As we were readying to turn around, we had a chance encounter with the very same ladies we had spoken to at our starting point for the day (the ladies were biking and stopped to chat about our kayaks)...seems these ladies were having a blast pedaling the roads while we were paddling the river? Fancy meeting up with them again and at this footbridge seemingly in the middle of nowhere! Saying our good-byes, we returned to the river to start the quick downstream assault! It had taken us two hours to travel a bit over 1.5 miles with an average moving speed of 1.1 mph, but the current and our paddling (plus my challenge to beat KAboom back) made the return trip quick, we were back in about 45 minutes and our average was up to 2.2 mph, WOW! We had also found many nice locations we plan to use for a long and scenic multi cache, we'll be back soon to place this! With the starting point bridge in sight, we mulled landing and making a short trip into town for batteries, but decided to venture on a bit and see what the downstream brought us.
The downstream side of the bridge was much like the upstream, very wide and scenic, flowers and the tall grasses lining the slow river's banks with a mixing of wooded lands in the background...we'd yet to even see a house at this point! This changed though as we found a few houses dotting the landscape as we lazily paddled on around bends and passing large lilypad patches. I told KAboom it looked more like a lake than a river, but we didn't think much of it until we chanced upon the reason! It was more hearing than seeing the cause of the wideness, there wasn't any other alerts to the dam ahead of us, not even a sign! That surprised me, but the drop didn't since you truly could hear it for a long distance back! Well, we'd already chosen a tree to take our lunch under, and coincidentally, it just so happened to be at the dam itself! We pulled up on the bank and pulled the cooler full of ham sandwiches and snacks out from my kayak, lunch is served!
A view upstream from the dam:
A view of the river below the dam:
Now, I must admit, I was apprehensive of continuing on and voiced my concerns to KAboom, but he wasn't buying it one bit and was determined we'd go on below the dam. The current was swift and I was worried the water was shallow, but I agreed we could try it and told KAboom (the stronger paddler) to attempt a return after going arounf the bend of the fast-flowing river, the picture doesn't show the bend or the "rapids" just beyond the view, but I could both hear and see what was coming up! KAboom, however, showed no signs of concern as we carried the kayaks to the bottom of the dam, the only thing slowing him was a HUGE brown snake swimming directly toward us! He jumped in, scared away the snake and then paddled into the swift waters, soon disappearing around the bend! I was certain he couldn't make the return, but I readied to set out all the same, I figured we'd be carrying the kayaks for certain and wasn't exactly looking forward to that...then I see KAboom paddling up against the current, he COULD make it! I soon was put in and we were off for more adventures down the river, what a fun experience thus far!
Paddling down was really nice, we could practice our turns on the many hairpins, we could hone our paddling skills a bit as well since we were in no hurry whatsoever! It was now about 2pm or so, we had the full day in front of us and were enjoying the fact that the river was completely free of blockages, making paddling a snap! We were having a great time exploring the many twists and turns, we found several dead-end branches of the main river which afforded some great hiding locations for caches, we marked a few along the way! After another hour or so, we found ourselves coming into another town, I recognized the bridge as we passed under it and my PN-40 confirmed we'd gone under US 12 and were now in Jonesville! We waved to a few townsfolk who were fishing on the bank near the bridge and then disappeared on around more bends before I spotted a rubber ducky! WOW, imagine that, a rubber ducky here? We soon found another and then another as we floated on down the increasingly swifter river, KAboom abandoned all concern and was now hunting duck, but I knew we were in a bit of a bad spot! The water was way too swift for us to paddle against it, my paddle (a two-piece and more expensive paddle than KAboom's one-piece) was now showing signs it wasn't strong and I couldn't put as much force behind my paddle strokes, we were dead in the water! KAboom had collected about 10 rubber duckies by now, I had one and we were now sitting on shore trying to figure out what to do next!
Fro here, we tried a few times to return up the current, no go! We decided we would then walk the river since the banks ruly were unfriendly with the growths and marshes, so into the water we went, kayaks in tow! I have to admit, the water felt nice on my legs, I was glad we bought watersocks! As soon as we were past the swift spot, we loaded back up and started on upstream again, but soon spotted more of the yellow duckies and made stops to pick up all we saw! KAboom thought he had found the jackpot and had several in his kayak, but I spotted the mother load in a corner blockage which, ironically was the place I found the first ducky, we couldn't believe we'd not seen all of them sitting there, but loaded them up! After a good hour of finding them in the water, we soon spotted a few on shore and KAboom rescued those as well!
At one point, KAboom flipped his kayak while trying to grab a ducky, so we stopped on a sandbar while he emptied his kayak of water, we could hear the rushing water from that point,the dam was just around the bend! I just knew KAboom would end up having to tow me in, but was pleasantly surprised that I made the bend and through the rapids without a problem, I was back at the dam and already pulling my craft onshore when KAboom finally rounded the bend, the younger and stronger paddler had troubles and needed to walk?? He'll not live that one down for some time! We stopped on the dam and ate another sandwich while watching some kids pull a 17" bass from above the dam, NICE! The return back up the slow waters above the dam was fun, we played "catch" with the duckies along the way, picking the ducks up with our paddle blades and then throwing them on with a flip of the wrist! At 7pm, we pulled back into the starting point and pulled up on shore, a day on the St. Joe was over, what a blast!!
Oh, and the duckies?? Well, here's a view of my kayak filled with them, we found around 200 or more total:
Be safe out there, wear proper protection whether on the roads or on the waters!!
Rod
Team Rod & Tod w/KAboom
The Cachestalkers
The Cachestalkers
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