Experimental trip

Experimental in two ways: 1) left the cats home by themselves overnight for the first time ever, and 2) wanted to see how my inflatable kayak and I would do in a stream with a significant current. No rapids or white water, just current.

Reporting on 1: cats seem fine. Left them lots of food (6 bowls in three locations); they seem to have eaten from all of them but not a lot from any one of them.  Phantom came to greet me when I got home; Shadow woke from his nap but left it for me to come greet him.

Since I left the cat door open, I assume they made a night of it, but will of course never know for sure. As long as they fall right back into the routine of allowing me to fetch them in each evening, I’ll count this as a 100% success.

Reporting on 2:  Monday afternoon drove down to Quosatana campground on the Rogue river with just CJ. In addition to regular camp setup, inflated the kayak so I would be ahead of the game in the morning. Which could have been a mistake, but oh well.

The goal: get upstream around the bend on the left to see what’s there. Picture taken Monday with beautiful sun.

Given the current, I was not confident, but I had a strategy: hug the right bank a ways then paddle across to the left bank and hug that bank to get around the bend, on the  (partially correct) assumption that the current would be less near the banks.

Ready to go:

One advantage to hugging the bank is being able to rest occasionally. Made it around the first little point:

Shortly after, realized the current on that side was picking up and headed across.  Here I’m nearing the other side, and here’s where the weakness in my strategy became clear: the current was pretty strong over there too.

Rested at that spot awhile, then paddled/fought my way up to a bush I could grab, and took the following video (click the link) to show you the current.

I tried going a bit further upstream, but it was too much so headed for shore. Where I experienced the worst part of the trip–fell on my butt while pulling the boat to shore. Really annoying–it was a very slow fall, one of those where you think you can stop it right up to the end, but I ended up sitting in about an inch of water. Moral: do not try to walk barefoot on mossy smooth rocks.

Recovering, pulled the boat onshore and walked up to the end of the bar to eat my snack. Used the paddle in lieu of my walking stick for balance on the river rocks.  This pic was taken from there , looking back to where I left the boat.

Ready to head back:

Headed promptly for the other shore, which allowed me to see some cool current effects, because the water was coming straight at the shore and got bounced back, producing interesting backcurrents and whirls.

From there it was a quick but enjoyable jaunt back.

So that experiment too was a success. I learned a few things, including that paddling upstream won’t get me very far. Now I’m scheming to find someone who’d like to drift downstream a good long ways, with a vehicle at each end. A few hours would take us all the way in to Gold Beach . . .