On August 4, Chrissy and I set out down the West Branch of the Delaware River around 6:40am. There was a light mist falling on us as we set out, which made for some pretty cool pictures. We passed by the Buckingham Access after about 1.5 hours and reached Lordsville in another hour after that. We would snack every once and awhile and Chrissy got the "Goldfish" song stuck in my head for at least an hour. We stopped in Stalker for lunch around 12:40pm before setting out to conquer the rapids by Red Barn Campground. We came across a group that was kayaking down to Callicoon and I happened to know the three guides. They were kind enough to inform me that they had seen my dad a half hour before up in Stalker. We continued on and made it to Callicoon around 3pm. I stopped there to re-coat myself in sunscreen before meandering on towards Damascus. I helped out a fishing tour boat by returning an oar to the guide as I was paddling downstream. By this point it hurt a lot to move my arms and my paddle felt like it weighed about 20 pounds. When I caught up to Chrissy, we decided to just relax and float for about an hour. During this hour we decided that it would be best to only paddle for 3 days to see how far we got as opposed to attempting the entire length of the Delaware River. We finally reached Skinners Falls campground around 6:30pm, which is where we decided to stop for the day. Luckily this happened to be my place of employment, so we were able to just pick a campsite and setup our tent.
After we got situated, I started hearing sirens coming from both sides of the river. A pickup with lights pulled into the parking lot across the road, followed by a fire truck. I assumed that the old Victorian house was on fire, but I didn't see any smoke. I went inside the store at Skinners Falls and asked my co-worker if she knew what was going on and she informed me that she had gotten a call that there was a missing 18 year old. That was when every possible vehicle from police cars, to an ambulance, to the park service started arriving and I knew that it couldn't be a good situation. I watched as numerous men put on scuba gear and air boats were sent into the river to go search for the missing swimmer. A couple hours went by until, unfortunately, an EMT came in asking for tarps, which meant that they had found the body and had to set up a tent in order to wait for the coroner. It was a very sobering moment and a good reminder to always wear my life jacket and to be thankful that I am alive.
Given our long evening and extremely sore muscles, we decided to sleep in until 8:30am the next morning. We got up, disassembled the tent, and gathered our gear before setting off on Day 2 of our excursion. We passed through Narrowsburg and avoided the eel weir on our way to Ten Mile River. After hours of paddling, we made it to Minisink around 4pm. We stopped and ate lunch and I used the phone to call my house to inform my parents of our progress. My goal was to reach Knights Eddy, but given our exhaustion and tendinitis, I knew in the back of my mind that wouldn't be possible. We kept on paddling down the river and saw an eagle, which was pretty cool. I was able to float down directly underneath the eagle and got some good pictures while it was perched in the tree. It was slowly getting dark as we approached an unmarked eel weir near Pond Eddy where I happened to spot my mom on shore waving us over. We paddled over and were informed that we could leave our kayaks there overnight and sleep at my parents that night. We were very grateful for a warm house to sleep in and some hot dinner.
The next morning we awoke at 8am and my mom drove us down to Pond Eddy. We set off down the river once again despite our sore arms and hands. Our boats were much lighter since we kept the gear at the house because we were only paddling another 3 hours to Matamoras, PA. I was very grateful for this considering the rapids that we encountered on our journey, which were definitely the most fun we had the entire trip. I got some pictures and video along the way, which are compiled in a short movie at the bottom of this post. We definitely enjoyed ourselves and plan on doing the rest of the river in increments until we do the entire length, including the Delaware Bay. I will definitely post again whenever we decide to continue our excursion.
No comments:
Post a Comment