With gas prices already obliterating my budget, I’ve decided to find a summer hobby that will keep me away from the pumps as much as possible.
My husband has had an adorable little yellow Old Town canoe collecting dust (and slowly losing its foam seat to small animals in need of nesting materials) in a barn in our backyard. We have a cottage on the lake in Sackets, and the Black River is a short drive from our house between Watertown and Sackets Harbor. Even with my math disability, this is an easy equation to work out: water everywhere + canoe = cheap family fun! Or is it? That’s what I am trying to find out.
A good part of my childhood was spent at my grandmother and grandfather’s beautiful children’s summer camp in northeastern Oklahoma. Kamp Paddle Trails is a lovely parcel of land situated on the banks of the scenic Illinois River. I spent many days swimming in those waters to escape the 100+ degree summer days. As I got older, my favorite camp pass-time became canoeing.
Even before I was physically large enough to steer a canoe, I must say, I was pretty good at paddling. If canoeing abilities are inherited, I had really great genes. My mom – who had grown up right there on those banks of the Illinois River – was occasionally my canoeing instructor.
When I got old enough, I took to sternmanship (is that a word?). My fellow campers and I were taught the sternman is the “boss” of the canoe. The bowman’s job was to be the lookout, and to follow the sternman’s instructions, no questions asked. I was a relatively shy and a spectacularly awkward kid, but I was completely confident in a canoe flying toward complicated rapids where I could not only tip us over and get our stuff soaked, I could also get myself and my partner very badly hurt. Maybe it was youth. Maybe it was stupidity. But mostly, I think it was something that felt very natural to me. There were very few times I miscalculated the speed of the water + the distance we had to an object / mine and my canoe-mate’s strength + the weight of the canoe. But, we almost never got wet unless we wanted to.
The highlight of my last few summers at KPT (which closed in 1995) were the 3-day canoe trips we took from camp to Tahlequah, OK. We paddled all the live long day, stopped for lunch and swimming (usually floating down lighter river rapids wearing our life vests like diapers – way more fun than it sounds), and gawked at the rural Oklahomans behaving badly as they floated down the river in inflatable rafts with full coolers of beer and ice on their laps. We stopped off, pitched our tarp-and-stake tents, cooked over our campfires and watched satellites lap stars in their race around the night sky.
Good times.
Anyway, here I find myself surrounded by epic bodies of water and I haven’t been boating (by the way, I don’t consider rowing or jet skiing PROPER boating) since I took an amazing trip down the Black River in 2005, courtesy of Hudson River Rafting.
Guys. I mean, the Black River is AMAZING. The stretch from downtown Watertown to Brownville is unbelievable. You can also watch kayakers in the “play area” right next to Maggie’s on the River, a Watertown restaurant. Here is a little information on kayaking the river.
Now, before those of you who are familiar with the Black River flip out and call the coast guard on me, let me just tell you that I am not stupid. Scatterbrained? Yes. Ditzy? Maybe. But I am not an idiot. Let me put this right out there so we’re all crystal clear – STAY AWAY FROM THE BLACK RIVER UNLESS YOU HAVE A PROFESSIONAL GUIDE FAMILIAR WITH THIS RIVER STANDING RIGHT NEXT TO YOU. People are swept away this time every year because they underestimated the power of the Black River.
So, to find out if it is even possible to take a canoe, say, from Dexter to Lake Ontario, I am putting on my investigative reporter hat and making some phone calls.
First, I called Bob Peterson, owner of B.O.B. Rafting in Dexter. I kind of know Bob from an event I helped promote and organize in 2005. I asked him what he thought of taking a canoe down the Black River. His alarm was apparent right over the phone lines. After assuring him I wasn’t planning to do this today, Bob was kind enough to share some important information:
1) The Black River is not user-friendly. If you pick the wrong spot, this particular river with its sharp limestone rocks, high water volume and fast flow will chew up a little canoe and spit it and its occupants back out like paper through a shredder.
2) Ask the right people for help. His specialty is rafting. Bob told me to visit the American Whitewater Association website and find the name of a local paddler who would have more information about where and when to canoe – and possibly in the future – learn to kayak.
3) He said if I check the United States Geological Survey’s WaterWatch page, I can keep up with the levels of the river. What this means to a paddler, I will have to find out.
Until I have time to get in touch with someone from the American Whitewater Association, I will continue with my plans to clean up and fix the seat of that canoe so I can take Diva paddling at the cottage this summer. Still water will have to do for the moment.
