The Annapolis River

Ok, its been a kayaking weekend, for sure. We paddled the Annapolis... from Wilmot to Middleton. 6.9 km. Of course, as the crow flies, it would probably be less than 5 km. As you can see, we looped around quite a bit. The blue line below shows the river and we paddled every one of those corners!We had to crawl down a very steep hill and put the kayaks into "rushing" water right under the bridge near Frenchies.. Man I was soooo scared. The first part of our paddle was FULL of rocks. Big ones, hiding under the surface, then shallow parts that we had to drag across. The water ran swift all the way through the river, which was why we traveled almost 7km in just over 2 hours. There was no time to take pictures because I couldn't really let go of the paddles.

Here is a list of the pictures I DIDN'T take.

* 6 sets of rapids (well, little rapids, but rapids no less)

* the 3 times I got grounded onto big rocks, twice in the middle of rapids

*the one time I rammed into Terry, in the middle of the biggest rapids, as he grounded onto a high rock

*the one time Terry had to paddle back to me to free me from one of the tangles I got myself into.

*The one time I almost tipped over, while getting myself out of the rapids.... Terry didn't even see that, as he was trying to survive them just a head of me!

*the GIANT dragonfly that landed on Terry's hat and sat for at least a minute, but the river was too rocky for me to take out the camera... it was soooo funny.

* the piping plovers who were scurrying around along each of the sandy sides of the curvy part of the river.

*the swallows that skimmed the water

It was fun to try and figure out where we were by what we could see off in the distance. We paddled past Sid's Par 3 course quite soon after we started out, but nothing familiar until we saw the Parson's Motor sign off in the distance. The river is so much lower than the banks, at least 10 feet down. Add to that the very tall grass that grew, so we were fairly isolated. We did see some wild life, a turtle sunning himself, a muskrat swimming with a pile of branches to deliver to his house. And a herd of horses (well 4 of them) and they were quite interested in us too. I thought the beautiful tawny one was going to jump into the river to get a better look.

The river was quite a challenge, but fun just the same. We paddled without the rudders which was a great way for me to learn the intricate steering needed to get around rocks, tree trunks, shallow spots and of course the really fun rapids. I lost a lot of nervousness, mostly because Terry was ahead of me always, and warned me of all the monsters lurking ahead. Even the rapids, which I thought would be terrifying were not as bad as the hiding rocks. I did bump into several of those rocks, and they didn't tip me, just re routed me, and that was OK too. I am learning. It helps when the water is only 4 to 6 feet deep and the banks are 20 feet away.

Baby steps...right. I was sad to see the end come so quickly. We thought it would take us 3 hours to paddle the 7km, just doing the math after the lakes we had paddled. We were surprised when

we turned yet another corner and the bridge in Middleton was there! (2 hours, 10 minutes) We had to do the car shuffle, so I waited with the kayaks while Terry drove to Wilmot to exchange cars and come back. That's it for kayaking for the next few weeks really. Maybe some evening paddles (hopefully to Trout Lake) but no big adventures because weekends will be busy for the next few!