Photographs! (The final round)

Here's one last round of photos from the Grand Canyon... for now, anyway.  I know some other people in our party took photos that I haven't seen yet, and whenever they become available I'll share them.

In the Grand Canyon, another day brings more enchanting rock formations for us to look at from the river.

Rob Lieb puts some sweat and tears into his effort at the oars.  J.D. Terry enjoys a little break.

Another shot of the canyon.

At any given moment during each day, I was likely to be gazing up at a wall like this one.

More canyon views.  The skies were often lovely.

I pose for a portrait before getting in the boat for our next-to-last full day of paddling.  We're camped at Hualapai Acres, 195 miles downstream of Lee's Ferry.  Photo by Kiley Haberman.

We saw a lot of bighorn sheep, especially during the second half of the trip.  Photo by Nathan Rakestraw.

There is but a narrow distinction between a benign wave and a monstrous hole.

Kaylin Owens works the oars on our penultimate full day of paddling.  Emily Cox soaks up the sunshine.  The headwinds were strong at times during the last several days, so things were actually not as idyllic as this photo makes them look.

Yahoo!  Whitewater!  There's a lot of it down there in the Grand Canyon.

On our next-to-last evening, we took a group photo at Lower Falls camp, 212 miles downstream of Lee's Ferry.  Kneeling, left to right: yours truly, Amelia Taylor, Brady Sleeper; standing, left to right: J.D. Terry, Wiik Ingle, Kylie Haberman, Nick Wirick, Rob Lieb, Nathan Rakestraw, Daniel Cox, Emily Cox, Kaylin Owens, Arlyn Agababian, Genevieve Verrastro.

Kaylin Owens spends our last full day of paddling in a kayak.

Another canyon view.

Amelia Taylor paddles against a backdrop of lava flows and basalt and all kinds of rocky stuff.

Yet another view from my boat.  Trust me, I have way more of these shots than I'm sharing here.

My boat is parked on a Grand Canyon beach for the last time.  We're camped just two miles above our takeout at Diamond Creek.

Kylie Haberman catches me in the act of admiring the quesadillas at our final camp near Mile 224.  That's Diamond Peak in the background.

They have faithfully transported all our gear down 226 miles of river, through many rapids, for sixteen days.  Now it's time to roll up the rafts and load them on the trailer for the ride back to the outfitter's property in Flagstaff.  We're taking out at Diamond Creek, the first road access to the Colorado River since Lee's Ferry.

Our group poses for one last photo at the Diamond Creek takeout.  Dramatically, they hoist me aloft (because I'm the trip leader, I guess).  From left to right, we have Genevieve Verrastro, Arlyn Agababian, Kaylin Owens (hidden), Brady Sleeper, Kylie Haberman, Nick Wirick, Nathan Rakestraw, Wiik Ingle, yours truly, Daniel Cox, Amelia Taylor, Emily Cox, J.D. Terry, and Rob Lieb.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Photographs! (Round Two)

Just one example of what one looks at while running the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.

Nick Wirick was our one source of live music during the trip.  Photo by Kiley Haberman.

Another view from the river.

One of the more beautiful and fascinating side hikes we took was up Matkatamiba Canyon on Day 10.  This canyon comes in from river-left about 148.5 miles downstream of Lee's Ferry.  Photo by Kiley Haberman.

That's me on the left, exploring Matkatamiba Canyon with Wiik Ingle.  Photo by Nathan Rakestraw.

Yet another view from the river.

It wasn't always sunny down in the canyon, but it certainly was much of the time.  Here's just one of the shadows I cast on the silty Colorado River.

Brady Sleeper does some surfing, and that wasn't so easy to do during our trip.  Good surfing waves often had no eddy service, and they were quite difficult to catch on the fly.

Rob Lieb walks a trail on the river-right bank near Whitmore Wash, where we'd hoped to see some pictographs but found them badly faded.

The view downstream from the trail to the pictographs.  Whitmore Wash comes in from the right.

 For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Photographs! (Round One)

All right, here's the first round of photos from the big Grand Canyon trip.  All photos are mine except where noted.  Most of my photos are actually screen grabs from videos I shot with my Go Pro camera.  Eventually I hope to share some video footage, but that'll take longer.

In the Air B&B we stayed in the night before Rig Day, J.D. Terry, Wiik Ingle, and Nick Wirick study the maps and ponder the river-running task before them.  Photo by Kylie Haberman.

Kylie Haberman at the granary above Nankoweap camp.  We hiked up here at the end of Day 3.  Photo by Nick Wirick.

On the morning of Day 6, Nathan Rakestraw and Brady Sleeper anticipate the three big rapids--Granite, Hermit, and Crystal--that we'll be running that day.

Rob Lieb is in high spirits while oarsman J.D. Terry gazes at the canyon walls.

There's no kidding around as Kaylin Owens and Emily Cox discuss the best line through Granite Rapid.

With self-preservation at the forefront of my mind, I assess Amelia Taylor's approach to Hermit Rapid.

Wiik Ingle savors the action of Day 6.

Genevieve Verrastro gazes at Crystal Rapid.  The "meat" of the rapid is upstream, off to the left of this photo, but there are hazards downriver, where Genevieve is looking, that can bedevil the unsuspecting boater.

Halfway down Crystal Rapid, I sit in a river-right eddy and watch Amelia Taylor run the "hero" line.  That's her at 11 o'clock off my bow.

Amelia Taylor has earned a "high five" after running Crystal.

Wiik Ingle (right) and Arlyn Agababian and Genevieve Verrastro navigate Crystal Rapid.  Crystal is about 99 miles downstream of Lee's Ferry on the Colorado River.

Day 7 was a "layover day": we spent the day at Bass camp (Mile 109) and did some hiking, visiting Shinumo Creek the next watershed over.  Kylie Haberman takes a selfie at the pool beneath the waterfall there, and she's nice enough to include Emily Cox and yours truly.

Kiley Haberman shot this photo of me as we prepared to depart Bass camp.

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Monday photo feature

This is something I saw a LOT of while driving out to Flagstaff and back, especially in New Mexico and the Texas panhandle.  The landscape was littered with restaurants that were boarded up or otherwise no longer operating.

I've been hearing for several years now that times are tough for the dining industry; we've lost quite a few restaurants here in Memphis where I live.  But no other region of the country I've visited looks harder-hit than the High Plains.  Mom-and-pop concerns and national chains alike appear to have felt the blow: in this photo we have what looks like a former Denny's restaurant in Tucumcari, New Mexico.

Okay, okay... I know what you're all saying right now: "Where are all those breathtaking photos you took in the Grand Canyon?"  The answer: I'm working on it.  Most of the images are stored on a couple of memory cards, and having gotten home just last night, I'm only just now finding time to sift through them.  I fully intend to Give The People What They Want, but these things do take time.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Americana fun (2025 edition)

Long-time readers of this blog know that one of my goals is to paddle a boat in every state of the United States of America.  The rules are simple: within the legal boundaries of a given state, I must be on a river, lake, or other body of water in a kayak or canoe, and take at least one paddle stroke.  Then I will have paddled in that state.

Before I put on the Colorado River at Lee's Ferry back on August 27, I had never paddled in the state of Arizona.  Now I have.  Boy, have I ever.  I can probably put together a list of ten states in which the combined number of paddle strokes I've taken is fewer than the number I took in the Grand Canyon in those sixteen days.

In summary, here's a list of the fifty states of this nation.  I have visited every one of them at least once.  I have marked with an asterisk (*) those states in which I have not paddled.  And there's now just one of them: Alaska.  The Last Frontier.

Alabama
Alaska*
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming

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A simple blow-by-blow

What follows is a summary of facts and figures of my journey down the Colorado River through Grand Canyon.  Hopefully I'll have more to say in the coming days, but for now I just want to get the basics down.

I was part of a party of fourteen, and I've listed their names below.  I've included each person's age to convey that aspect of the group's diversity:

Arlyn Agababian (38), Asheville, North Carolina

Daniel Cox (23), Morristown, Tennessee

Emily Cox (51), Morristown, Tennessee

Kiley Haberman (30), Marietta, South Carolina

Elmore Holmes (58), Memphis, Tennessee

Wiik Ingle (52), Asheville, North Carolina

Rob Lieb (59), Holmes, New York

Kaylin Owens (29), Cosby, Tennessee

Nathan Rakestraw (30), Erwin, Tennessee

Brady Sleeper (53), Asheville, North Carolina

Amelia Taylor (39), Sevierville, Tennessee

J.D. Terry (45), Mammoth Lakes, California

Genevieve Verrastro (41), Asheville, North Carolina

Nick Wirick (36), Del Rio, Tennessee

The flow of the Colorado River varied between around 9000 and around 11,000 cubic feet per second during our trip.  That's at Lee's Ferry, anyway; flash flooding on tributary creeks impacted the flow farther downriver.

And now, a summary of our daily progress:

Day 0 (August 26)

Met at our outfitter's property and traveled some two and a half hours to our putin.  Rigged our boats and camped at Lee's Ferry (Mile 0).

Day 1 (August 27)

Headed downriver through a mixture of sunshine and heavy rain.  Spent the night at Hot Na Na camp (Mile 16.5).

Day 2 (August 28)

Busy whitewater day as we ran House Rock Rapid (Class 7 on the 1-10 scale), North Canyon Rapid (Class 5), Twentyone Mile Rapid (Class 5), Georgie Rapid (Class 6), Twentyfour and One-Half Mile Rapid (Class 6), Hansbrough-Richards Rapid (Class 6), Cave Springs Rapid (Class 5), Twentyseven Mile Rapid (Class 5), and Fence Fault Rapid (Class 5).  Camped at Nautiloid camp (Mile 35).

Day 3 (August 29)

A mellower day for whitewater, with just a couple of Class 4s.  Camped at Main Nankoweap camp (Mile 53.5), where we hiked up to a Navajo granary.

Day 4 (August 30)

Passed the mouth of the Little Colorado River, which marks the beginning of Grand Canyon proper.  Rapids included Kwagunt Rapid (Class 5), Tanner Rapid (Class 6), Basalt Rapid (Class 6), and Unkar Creek Rapid (Class 6).  Camped at Upper Rattlesnake camp (Mile 74.5).

Day 5 (August 31)

One of the bigger whitewater days, with Nevills Rapid (Class 6), Hance Rapid (Class 8), Sockdolager Rapid (Class 7), Grapevine Rapid (Class 7), Zoroaster Rapid (Class 5), and Horn Creek Rapid (Class 8).  Passed Phantom Ranch, which was still closed as a result of the Dragon Bravo fire.  Replenished our water supply from the spigot at Boat Beach.  Spent the night at Ninetyone Mile Creek camp (just shy of Mile 92).

Day 6 (September 1)

Three Class 8s: Granite Rapid, Hermit Rapid, and Crystal Rapid.  Also Tuna Creek Rapid (Class 6), Sapphire Rapid (Class 6), Emerald Rapid (Class 5), Ruby Rapid (Class 5), and Serpentine Rapid (Class 7).  Stopped for the night at Bass camp (Mile 109).

Day 7 (September 2)

Layover day at Bass camp.  Hiked over a small ridge to the Shinumo Creek watershed and swam beneath a waterfall.

Day 8 (September 3)

The river run resumed with mostly small rapids, excepting Walthenberg Rapid (Class 6).  The water had turned muddier overnight due to some flooding up on the Little Colorado River.  Visited Elves Chasm, a popular swimming spot.  Camped at Lower Blacktail camp (just before Mile 121) at the mouth of Blacktail Canyon.  The canyon was beautiful, but the camp was rocky and inhospitable, especially in the rainy, windy conditions we had.

Day 9 (September 4)

Whitewater highlights included Forster Rapid (Class 5), Fossil Rapid (Class 5), Specter Rapid (Class 6), Bedrock Rapid (Class 7), Deubendorff Rapid (Class 7), and Tapeats Rapid (Class 5).  Passed the point where the Colorado River necks down to just 76 feet wide.  Camped at Across Deer Creek camp (just before Mile 137).

Day 10 (September 5)

Visited Deer Creek Falls along with a throng of customers from a commercial raft trip.  Proceeded downriver and stopped for a hike up the beautiful Matkatamiba Canyon.  Camped a short distance farther down at Matkat Hotel camp (Mile 149).  Watched as a heavy thunderstorm created flash-flood waterfalls on a cliff face just upstream.

Day 11 (September 6)

Headed downstream and ran Upset Rapid (Class 8).  Continued down to Havasu Canyon, where storm runoff had washed out the milky-blue water we had hoped to find.  Camped at Lower National camp (Mile 167).

Day 12 (September 7)

Woke up to find the Colorado flowing a dark reddish-brown.  Even the "whitewater" was that color as we headed downstream.  We arrived at Lava Falls (Class 9), arguably the most bodacious rapid in the Grand Canyon, and the color of the water made it seem all the more intimidating.  We all survived Lava and spent the night at Below Lower Lava camp (Mile 180).

Day 13 (September 8)

The water had turned a dark grey overnight--probably runoff from the Dragon Bravo fire burn area.  The sediment load was so thick that I couldn't see my paddle blade at all when I dipped it in the water.  We encountered mostly mellow whitewater, but headwinds picked up in the afternoon.  Camped at Hualapai Acres camp (Mile 195).

Day 14 (September 9)

We spent another day fighting strong headwinds.  Our best distractions were Kolb Rapid (Class 6) and Two Hundred and Ninemile Rapid (Class 5).  Pushed all the way to Lower Fall Canyon camp (Mile 212).

Day 15 (September 10)

Hot weather made the headwinds strong for a third day in a row.  Biggest whitewater was Two Hundred and Seventeenmile Rapid (Class 5).  Camped at Two Hundred and Twentyfour Mile camp (Mile 223.5).

Day 16 (September 11)

Takeout Day.  Paddled the final couple of miles down to Diamond Creek (just before Mile 226), where we de-rigged our boats and loaded everything onto our outfitter's truck and trailer.  A drive of several hours back to Flagstaff ensued.

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I have emerged

The Grand Canyon adventure has come to an end.  My fourteen-member party reached the takeout at Diamond Creek this morning.  It took us a few hours to load our gear on the outfitter's trailer and make the trip back to Flagstaff.  Now I'm relaxing in an Air B&B in Flagstaff before heading back toward home tomorrow.

I'll have much to say about the trip later, and lots of photos and videos to share.  But these things will probably come out in dribs and drabs, given all the many things I must catch up on back in civilization.

For now I'll just say that the trip was just about everything I'd expected.  I expected the Grand Canyon to be beautiful, inspiring, awesome, and majestic, and it was.  I also expected the trip to be exhausting and physically demanding, and it was that, too.

I figured that traversing the canyon with thirteen other people, many of whom I'd never met and probably didn't have a lot in common with, would feel like a challenge at times.  But for the most part I enjoyed their company, and most importantly, I was able to experience the canyon my way, on my terms.  I can't recall doing anything I didn't want to just because I was outnumbered in the group.

I am dead-dog tired and fixing to go sleep a very long time.  I'll have more here later, I promise.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Monday photo feature

Not that the picture does it justice or anything, but I had a pleasant trip across the Painted Desert in northeastern Arizona this morning.

I am now in Flagstaff, the staging area for my Grand Canyon trip.  The other thirteen members of my party are trickling into town.  Tomorrow morning we'll go to the property of our outfitter who's providing our rafts and other equipment, and we'll ride the outfitter's bus to the putin at Lee's Ferry, where we'll spend the day rigging the rafts and meeting with the National Park Service ranger and stuff like that.  We'll camp at Lee's Ferry and, on the 27th of August, our official Launch Day, we will launch.

This is probably the last post you'll see here until after the trip concludes on September 11.  We'll have a satellite phone for emergencies, but otherwise I plan to be off the grid for sixteen days.  And I'm hopeful that'll be a good thing.  Putting this trip together has been kind of a stressful process, and I'm ready for the planning to end and the actual adventure to begin.  Meanwhile, I think it's becoming better and better documented that the Internet and social media and everything are not the greatest asset to one's mental health--never has it been more difficult to "get away from it all."  But for two and a half weeks I hope to be away from it all, with no regrets.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

The not-so-young man heads west

Scheduled to launch from Lee's Ferry, Arizona, on August 27, I'm making my way across this nation.

I left home mid-morning Friday, and spent that night in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, a couple of hundred yards from the Oklahoma state line.  Yesterday morning I got up and had breakfast, and then crossed into Oklahoma and went a few miles south to the WOKA Whitewater Center.

It had been one of my objectives to tune up for the Grand Canyon by doing some whitewater paddling while crossing the state of Oklahoma.  That might seem like a funny thing to say, since Oklahoma is not exactly known for its abundance of whitewater streams.  But it does have Riversport OKC in Oklahoma City, an artificial whitewater course that has hosted national-level whitewater slalom competitions and will be the venue for no less than the Olympic Games in 2028.

Several weeks ago I visited the Riversport website hoping to find a reasonably cheap way to drop in there and paddle for an hour or so.  Sadly, there didn't seem to be any such accommodation.  The fee schedule encourages people to sign up for annual memberships and seasonal passes and stuff like that, and the cheapest option seemed to be a $60 day pass--more than I wanted to pay for just a quick session during a long day of traveling.

I started looking for other offerings along my route to Arizona, and that's when I found WOKA.

WOKA, which stands for "Waters of Oklahoma and Arkansas," is located next to a dam on the Illinois River (a different river from the one that flows in the state of Illinois).  A side channel has been constructed that runs downhill from the surface of the reservoir above the dam to the level of the river below the dam, as shown in this image from the WOKA website:

The river flows from right to left in this photo.  The channel's developers used the gradient to construct a few whitewater features, and it has become a popular park-and-play spot for paddlers in the northwest Arkansas and northeast Oklahoma region.  The Illinois River is spring-fed, assuring a minimum level of flow even in the summer months when the natural rivers and creeks of the Ozarks have dried up.

And it was ideal for my purposes, because all I had to pay was a 10-dollar parking fee.

I put my boat on the water at WOKA yesterday morning hoping to make up for my lack of whitewater paddling in the last year.  Even after all those drills I put myself through at home this summer, it quickly became apparent that I was rusty.  There's no substitute for having genuine whitewater (even the man-made kind) under your boat.  I spent an hour surfing and trying various moves on the canal's drops, and by the end of it my confidence had risen markedly.  I'm glad I invested the time, so that I won't be putting on the Colorado River completely cold.  This photo that I shot of one of the other paddlers gives an idea of the kind of whitewater one finds at WOKA.  This is "Drop 1" on the map above:

Interstate 40 runs from Memphis all the way to Flagstaff, so it would have made sense for me to drive that road all the way.  But getting to WOKA required that I make a bit of a detour up into the northeastern portion of Oklahoma.  So when I finished paddling yesterday, I found myself poring over the map for the best way to get back to I-40.  I had competing desires: to make efficient progress in my drive to Arizona versus to see some interesting sights.  The route I chose probably leaned toward the latter desire even though I think it added the smallest amount of distance to my overall journey.  Basically, I took a bunch of secondary roads across largely-rural northern Oklahoma before finally slanting southwestward into the Texas panhandle to re-join I-40 at Amarillo.

The going was slow at times: in almost every town I had to reduce my speed to 30 or even 25 miles per hour, and getting stuck behind slow drivers on two-lane roads was the norm.  But I generally enjoyed watching the landscape roll by, making its transition from the deciduous forests of the Mid South and lower Midwest to the open grasslands of the Great Plains.  Back in the 1990s I drove out to the Rocky Mountains to paddle whitewater every summer, and it was the attitude of my friends and me that one must traverse the Plains as rapidly and painlessly as possible en route to "the good stuff" in the mountains.  But the truth is, I like the Great Plains.  I wouldn't want to live there or anything, but I enjoy taking the time to observe what life is like for the people who do live there.  And contrary to many people's impression, the Plains are not flat as a pancake; the terrain is actually quite rolling.

What's more, my involvement in open-water paddling in a surfski has made me appreciate the paddling possibilities in the Plains.  The wind can blow relentlessly there, and back in July of 2021 I had a sure-enough downwind session on the Missouri River where it crosses from North Dakota into South Dakota.

However, my mood was darkening a bit as I passed through the little towns on the final approach to Amarillo.  Those towns were rather depressing, with lots of boarded-up storefronts and virtually nothing of interest going on that I could see.  It was getting on into suppertime, and from what I could tell, the restaurants and diners and cafes these towns once had have long since gone out of business.  I had to go all the way into Amarillo, the urban center of the Texas panhandle, to find a place to eat.

I bunked for the night in Amarillo, and now I'm enjoying a more relaxing morning than I had yesterday, when I wanted to get my paddling in at WOKA and then cover some miles on the road.  I'm feeling sore after stressing my muscles in a way they weren't used to, but now they've got time to recover and steel themselves before I put more such stress on them starting Wednesday.

Today my goal is Gallup, New Mexico: it's less than six hours from here, and since I'll gain an hour when I cross into the Mountain Time zone, I should get there at a very reasonable time of day.  From there, it's less than three hours to Flagstaff, so tomorrow I should get to Flagstaff around midday and have time to visit with my trip's outfitter and start making final preparations for my expedition through the Grand Canyon.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

My mood is something short of electric as I prepare to depart

I've spent my last few days at home following my usual canyon conditioning program, with some paddling and some bike riding.  I've been doing it in some pretty hot weather, too.  It gets quite hot on the floor of the Grand Canyon, but I hope the lower humidity will make it seem like a relief after the sweltering heat we've had here in the Mid South this summer.

I rode my bike Monday morning.  I did the ride I often do, out the Greater Memphis Greenline to Shelby Farms, around the lake, and back.  It takes me around 95 minutes, usually.

On Tuesday I spent 40 minutes in the whitewater boat in the harbor.  There's no better remedy for summer heat than some Eskimo rolls.

A front moved through the area Tuesday evening, bringing some strong gusty winds.  They didn't last more than 15 or 20 minutes, but they blew some tree branches that were encroaching on the power lines that serve my house, and some lines got squeezed together and blew out the transformer.  So I spent Tuesday night and yesterday morning with no electricity.  I'm sure I've had worse nights of sleep, but I lay awake for extended periods feeling sweaty and uncomfortable, not to mention frustrated at how long it was taking the power company to show up and make repairs.  I got maybe five hours of sleep, all told.

There were some 160 outages citywide, affecting several thousand customers.  The utility company finally got to my property by mid-morning yesterday, and had the electricity back on by lunchtime.  I felt a little groggy from the lackluster sleep, but I got out for an afternoon bike ride, happy that I had an air-conditioned home waiting for me when I was finished.

This morning I had my last paddling session before I hit the road.  I got in the surfski and would have been happy just paddling to the mouth of the harbor and back.  But when I reached the mouth I saw an upstream-moving barge rig well positioned for me to get to it quickly, so I went out for some surfing.  The waves were good, but not great; definitely nothing like the awesome conditions of last Saturday.  But I was able to do some interesting stuff for a short while.  Then I returned to the harbor, paddled back to the dock, and took both the ski and the whitewater boat up to the truck to bring home.  It could be a good month before I get back to the dock on the Memphis riverfront.

There's lots of packing to do, and I hope I can remember to include everything I'll need during sixteen days in the wilderness.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Monday photo feature

Saturday before last, after I raced down the Mississippi River from Grafton, Illinois, to Alton, Illinois, I rode my bike from Alton back up to Grafton to retrieve my vehicle.  During my ride I stopped to take this picture, which illustrates a big difference between the "upper" Mississippi (above the confluence with the Ohio River) and the "lower" river down where I live.

The flow of the upper Mississippi is controlled by a series of dams, just like the Ohio, the Missouri, the Tennessee, the Columbia, and other sizable rivers in North America.  Because of that, it's feasible to build a road right alongside the river, like Illinois highway 100 pictured here.

The lower Mississippi has no dams.  It's entirely free-flowing, and as it approaches its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico, it meanders wildly across a broad flood plain, occasionally adopting a new course and leaving behind an abandoned meander (an "oxbow lake").  Because of that, there aren't many roads running right alongside the lower Mississippi.  Much of the lower river is simply a remote bottomland wilderness.

That's the bike path in the foreground of the photo.  It's just a strip of asphalt, similar to the Greater Memphis Greenline here where I live.  Much of it was bumpier and weedier than my trail here, however.  The section I rode is in two counties: Madison County (where Alton is) and Jersey County (where Grafton is).  The condition of the trail improved dramatically as soon as I crossed into Jersey County.  Maybe Madison County is experiencing more fiscal stress than Jersey.  Or maybe they just don't think it's that important to maintain a bicycle trail.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Finding ways to get wet like the ducks do

I went to the riverfront yesterday morning and paddled the surfski out on the Mississippi.  There was no barge traffic nearby, so it was just some steady paddling.  Maybe the most interesting thing was back at the dock, where some ducks I'd never seen before were hanging out.  I was surprised at how close they let me get with my camera:

Today I paddled the surfski on the river again, and it was, quite simply, awesome.  When I got to the mouth of the harbor there was a barge rig down below the old bridges, coming upstream.  I paddled around a while until it reached the downtown Memphis area, and then headed for its wake.  What followed was as good a surfing session as I've ever had on the Memphis riverfront.  It was at least as good as this session in May of 2020, and maybe even better because while the conditions five years ago gave me nice extended rides, the conditions today challenged me to work each wave either to stay on it or to link onto another wave.  I was in my relatively stable V10 Sport ski, and I was pushing that stability to its limit.  A couple of times I thought for sure I was going over, but each time I executed a timely lean to stay upright.

Eventually the towboat left me behind and the waves petered out.  It was shaping up into a very hot day, but at least I'd found a wet, fun way to spend part of it.  I returned to the harbor for the two-kilometer paddle back to the dock under a blazing sun.  I cooled off by practicing some remounts, and then back at the dock I took a cool hose bath and savored the endorphin rush from all the hard paddling I'd done.

It looks like we're in for some more oppressive heat between now and my departure for Arizona.  Arizona will be hot too, of course, but at least out there it's a dry heat.

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It's the home stretch toward this year's BIG trip

Now that I've done perhaps my one race for the year, I've settled back in at home for one last period of normalcy before I embark on my great Grand Canyon expedition.  My launch date is August 27, and I'm looking at starting the drive out to Arizona a week from tomorrow.

On Tuesday I still wasn't feeling a hundred percent recovered from the exhausting adventure up on the upper Mississippi.  I went down to the riverfront and spent 40 minutes in the whitewater boat.  I eased into it, and pretty soon I had a vigorous round of drills going.  The day was hot, just like we expect here in August, and it felt good to do lots of Eskimo rolls.  There were plenty of forward drills, backpaddling drills, and spin drills, too.  Even though it's been close to a year since I've been on actual whitewater, I'm not too worried about making the adjustment quickly once I put my boat on the Colorado.  Over decades of experience, I've never had a significant problem with that.

Yesterday I rode my bike out the Greater Memphis Greenline and the Wolf River Greenway to the Walnut Grove bridge, and came back.  It felt easy after my post-race ride from Alton to Grafton last Saturday.  I've done a nice volume of riding this summer, and my body feels good and used to it.

This morning I returned to the river and got in the surfski for the first time since the race.  I paddled to the mouth of the harbor hoping to find some wake-surfing action, but the barge rigs I saw on the Mississippi were beyond my reach.  So I returned to the dock and hopped in the whitewater boat for some more rolls and drills.  I felt good when I was finished: there's something satisfying about preparing for one of the world's more famous stretches of whitewater right here in my humble harbor.

My digestive system felt better for several weeks, but for the last couple of weeks it's been a little out of whack again.  Last Saturday morning it was feeling like it might give me some trouble during the race, but it settled down in time for the start.  I'm doing everything I know how to do to get it into a state of equilibrium before I leave town again.

Meanwhile, the news from the Dragon Bravo fire on the Grand Canyon's North Rim is encouraging: as of today firefighters have achieved 54% containment.  I think they've had more cooperation from the weather the last couple of days.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Monday photo feature

Here we are in Busch Stadium, the home ballpark for my favorite baseball team, the Saint Louis Cardinals.  I was here Friday evening to take in a game between the Cardinals and their most hated rival, those dastardly Chicago Cubs.

It was the fourth time I've seen the Cardinals and Cubs play in person.  In 2011 I attended a game at Wrigley Field on the North Side of Chicago.  The Cubs won that game in a walkoff, and I had to sit there while the insufferable song "Go Cubs Go" blasted over the PA system.  (The Cardinals got the last laugh that year, however, by winning the World Series.)

The following season I saw the Cardinals and Cubs play at Busch Stadium on consecutive days.  The good guys won both games.  And that was the last time I attended a Cardinals game until this past Friday evening.  The Cardinals rewarded my return by playing one of the better games they've played all year: with good pitching and defense, smart base running, and timely hitting, they beat the Cubs 5-0.

Baseball is the only one of the big pro team sports I've followed in the last thirty years or so.  In general, I'd rather be participating in my own athletic pursuits than sitting in a stadium watching other people be athletes.  But baseball is an enjoyable diversion in the summertime.  Most of the time I listen to the games on the radio while I work in my shop or do things around the house.

One of the things about baseball that fascinates me is its organized minor league system.  Guys show up at the single-A level having been superstars throughout childhood, only to have to distinguish themselves in the subtlest of ways to move up.  Many a touted prospect has failed to reach the majors because his reflexes were hundredths of a second too slow, or he swung at a pitch out of the strike zone just a little too often, or his throws were a fraction of a degree off target, or there were simply too many guys with similar skill sets on the big league club.  For every player on a major league roster, there are dozens who were probably capable of being there but fell short for some tiny reason, and that has helped me come to terms with my status as a good-but-not-great canoe and kayaker racer.  If paddling were baseball I'd probably be playing out my career in double-A, and I've accepted that and try to acquit myself there the best I can.

I also enjoy hearing the radio announcers talk about the players' daily training.  Mastering the mechanics of pitching or batting sounds a lot like mastering an effective forward stroke.  A baseball player might have greater potential for fame and wealth than I do, but his daily routine as an athlete is remarkably similar to mine.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

A successful race leaves me feeling "tired" in more ways than one

I attended the Firecracker Race on the upper Mississippi River yesterday.  This event has occurred in several different locations over the years; these days it's a 24-kilometer (15-mile) race from Grafton, Illinois, to Alton, Illinois.  I think it took place on Independence Day weekend years ago, and that explains its name.

Turnout for the race was robust.  Because I hadn't decided to register until just a few days before, I missed out on both a post-race meal ticket and a seat on the shuttle bus that transported racers who had left their vehicles down at Alton back to the start.  Meanwhile, race director Craig Heaton decided to split the field into two waves at the start: most boats would start at the advertised time of 9:30 AM, but a couple of men's solo kayak classes, including mine, would start ten minutes later.

Grafton is located where the Illinois River flows into the Mississippi.  As soon as the bulk of the field started in the first wave at 9:30, the rest of us lined up in the mouth of the Illinois as the ten-minute stagger interval ticked down.  Soon enough, we were off.  Within the first ten minutes I found myself all alone in first place among all second-wavers, and from there on out the race would be an exercise in river-reading, pacing, and energy conservation.

I was definitely getting help from the current: I think once or twice the reading on my G.P.S. device went as high as 14.8 kilometers per hour.  Most of the time it hovered in the high 13s and low 14s.  Pretty soon I was overtaking some of the first-wave racers, and that aided my river-reading mission, since the majority of them were local to the region and knew this section of the river better than I.

My speed made it clear that my race would take somewhere between 100 minutes and two hours.  That's well within my comfort zone, but several factors--the heat (around 90 degrees Fahrenheit), the headwind, and the fact that I hadn't been doing any racing this year--compelled me to be conservative to avoid the dreaded "bonk."  I tried to paddle at a controlled 70 strokes per minute; I kept wanting to wander up closer to 75 spm, and continually I had to make myself back off.

Meanwhile, my competitive urges were spurring me along.  While it seemed that I had my own boat class (solo race kayaks) well in hand, I was hoping maybe I could clock the fastest time of the day.  The trouble was, my main competition for that distinction--tandem race boats--had started in the first wave, and so I had no idea how I was doing relative to them.  As the race went on I passed most of the boats in the first wave, and I scanned the river in front of me to see if I could spot any of those fastest boats.

Fatigue was starting to set in as I neared the one-hour mark.  And the water conditions seemed to be getting choppier and choppier.  There was a breeze blowing upriver, as I said, and there were some barges and other motorized boat traffic as well.  By the time I rounded the bend to get my first glimpse of the bridge at Alton, some 8 kilometers off in the distance, all kinds of confused little waves were slapping at my boat.  Though the conditions were nothing I don't see all the time back home on the lower Mississippi, 16 kilometers into a 24-kilometer race my motor coordination was starting to crumble.  More and more I started to concentrate just on staying upright.

With around 7 kilometers to go my speed plummeted as low as 10 kph, and I wondered if I was losing the assistance of the current.  There's a dam not far below the race's finish line, and I thought maybe I had hit the water that was backed up behind it.  Soon, however, I realized I had simply made a river-reading error: I looked to my left and saw that there were sandbars separating me from the main channel.  I worked my way over as aggressively as I dared, and before long I was back up around 14 kph.  Such is life when you race on a big river like the Mississippi: your G.P.S. device shows a drop in your speed, and you ask yourself, "Have I moved into some slower water?  Is the headwind getting worse?  Have I hit the slackwater behind the dam?  Or am I just getting tired and slowing down?"

Ever so painfully, the Alton riverfront inched closer.  By now I was overtaking the fastest female kayakers and could see a tandem surfski in the distance.  As long as I was within ten minutes of a first-wave boat like that one, I would finish with a better time.  Little by little I reeled it in, and with less than two kilometers left I went by it.

I was continuing to move along at over 14 kph.  (I later learned that all of the dam's gates were open, providing us with strong current all the way to the finish.)  Now, the only boat I could see was a four-person "Voyager" canoe.  I tried to pull even with it, but its paddlers were stubbornly keeping it beyond my reach.  The finish line loomed a few hundred meters ahead, alongside a sea wall where the timing officials were perched with their clipboards and stopwatches.  Waves reverberating from the seawall made stability trickier than ever, but I relaxed my core muscles and sprinted as hard as I could.  I advanced to within half a boatlength of beating the canoe, but that was as good as I was going to do: I crossed the line with a time of one hour, 46 minutes, 27 seconds.  The canoe, of course, had had a ten-minute head start on me, so its official time came to 1:56:24.

The paddlers of the tandem surfski I had recently passed congratulated me on my race.  I asked them if they were the fastest tandem, and they replied, "Oh, no.  There were a couple of boats in front of us that we lost sight of long ago."

As it turned out, the fastest time of the day was clocked by a tandem outrigger canoe (OC2) paddled by Rusty Self and Thomas Selva.  They crossed the line one hour, 43 minutes, 30 seconds after they'd started.  Just behind them, a tandem surfski paddled by the husband-and-wife team of Alma and Bryan Hopkins clocked 1:43:42.  So I would have to settle for being the third-fastest boat in the field.  

I really don't think it was necessary to split the field into two waves; there weren't that many people registered, and the Mississippi is a big river that could have accommodated everybody in one mass start.  In that scenario I would have been able to compete directly with the fastest boats, trade some wake rides with them, and maybe have a shot at the "fastest overall" distinction by the end of the race.  Then again, three minutes is a lot... it had taken all I had just to go 1:46, so I don't know if I could have challenged those other two boats or not.

But, honestly... it's foolish of me to quibble over something like that.  The fact is that the paddlers of those fastest boats performed really well and clocked great times.  And I performed well and beat all the other solo racers.  I should just let myself be happy with that.

The complete results are posted here.

I was beat to the socks, but I still had work to do.  Because I'd registered too late to get a seat on the shuttle bus, I had to come up with another plan to retrieve my truck from the start up at Grafton.  And that plan involved my bicycle, which I'd left on the Alton riverfront before driving up to the start.  Now it was time to hop on the bike and start riding.  There's a bike path alongside Illinois highway 100 between the two towns, and I spent the next hour pedaling the 24 kilometers back to where my truck was parked.  All this summer paddling and bike-riding have been staples of my Grand Canyon conditioning program, so yesterday amounted to a massive training day for that expedition that's now just 17 days away.

If racing on the river had worn me out pretty good, the bike ride finished me off completely.  I drove back to Alton and joined in the post-race event at a local brewpub.  I'd registered after all the meal tickets had been spoken for, so I just paid for my own meal--a big old chicken sandwich and french fries.  I wolfed it down, received my first-place award in the men's racing kayak class, and walked out to my truck to begin the five-hour drive back to Memphis.

I was dead-dog tired and hoping I had enough energy for the trip.  But the day's drama wasn't quite over yet.  Driving south on Interstate 255, which bypasses Saint Louis en route to I-55 South to Memphis, I sensed that something wasn't quite right about how the truck was running.  Soon the whole cab was vibrating, and I wasn't sure if the problem was my truck or a bumpy road surface.  Seconds later, I got my answer: my driver's side front tire blew out.  I managed to get to the road's left shoulder, fish the jack and related tools from beneath the bench seat, and get the tire off.  It was clear that this tire had made its final spin:

Fortunately, my truck's spare tire is an actual tire, not one of those silly "donut" wheels.  It would get me back to Memphis just fine (as long as I didn't have another flat, that is).  But it was mounted underneath the chassis at the truck's rear, and to access it I ended up having to remove my bike and the bike rack (and the only reason I'd even brought my bike was that I'd missed out on a shuttle bus ticket... aargh).  Working under the blazing sun in muggy 92-degree heat, I got the spare tire put on and was thoroughly covered in grime and drenched in sweat when it was over.

The rest of the drive home, through southeast Missouri and northeast Arkansas, was dull.  But I'd had all the excitement I needed for the day, and then some.  I arrived home a little after nine o'clock.  Glad to have had a sizable late lunch, I whipped up a small, simple supper.  Then I took a shower and went to bed, falling asleep in no time.

I woke up this morning feeling sluggish and achy, but not as sore as I sometimes feel the day after a race.  By way of a recovery session I did some full-body stretching at home, then went to the riverfront for an easy half-hour in the whitewater boat.  A typical round of stroke drills for me is a vigorous affair, with me putting all the explosive power I can into my strokes.  Afterward I feel like I've been in the weight room.  But today I kept the intensity low.  I've continued to feel sluggish and weary the rest of today, but hopefully I'll have some pep back in my step as a new week gets underway.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Some impromptu race prep

I've made sort of a spur-of-the-moment decision to attend a race this weekend.  The Firecracker Race is a 24-kilometer (15-mile) trek down the Mississippi River from Grafton, Illinois, to Alton, Illinois.  It's something like a five-hour drive from where I live.  I plan to leave Friday, spend the night in Saint Louis, and come home after the race on Saturday.

I don't consider myself particularly trained up, but my fitness seems good.  I've been recovering quickly whenever I do hard sprints, such as when surfing barge wakes, and that's always a good sign.  The course is on the upper Mississippi--upstream of where the Ohio River comes in--so I'm unsure how much help I'll get from the current, but I'm pretty sure I can do it in less than two hours.  I don't know what other racers might show up--the registration site doesn't have a list of registrants.  I just want to go up there and see what I can do after months of mostly unstructured paddling.  My guess is I won't be setting any kind of torrid pace, but I hope I can compete well with whoever is there.

After a bike ride on Monday, Tuesday morning I paddled the surfski for 30 minutes and the whitewater boat for 30 minutes.  With a race coming up this Saturday, I did six short (12-stroke) sprints in the surfski to give my ATP-CP energy system a bit of work.  In the whitewater boat I did the usual round of stroke drills and Eskimo rolls, preparing myself for whatever the Colorado River might throw at me later this month.

The highlight of Tuesday's paddling session was seeing a gar jump straight up out of the water right in front of me.  The gar are always very active at this time of year, but they don't often catch air above the surface--that's more the M.O. of those invasive Asian carp.  I got a good look at this gar's long, needlelike nose.  Gar are truly unique-looking creatures.

This morning I was back on the riverfront for a short session in the surfski.  I did another six 12-stroke sprints in the hope of feeling sharp and ready to go on Saturday.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Monday photo feature

Twenty years ago, I paddled a section of the Colorado River in the state of Utah, from Moab down to the community of Potash.

In just over three weeks, I plan to put my boat on the same river some distance downstream, at Lee's Ferry, Arizona.

In the photo above, I'm paddling my old beat-up wildwater K1.  These days that boat is hanging underneath the deck on the rear side of my house, unused for years.  My boat of choice for the trip through the Grand Canyon is a polyethylene C1 that's designed for general whitewater river-running.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Nicer weather, a mental break from the fire, and, of course, some paddling

We're finally getting a break from the suffocating moist heat that tormented the Mid South--and quite a bit of the wider nation--for several weeks.  This weekend the Fahrenheit temperatures are in the mid 80s, and north breezes have brought in not-so-humid air.

Yesterday I got in the surfski and paddled from the dock to the mouth of the harbor.  There I looked out over the Mississippi and saw a big barge rig that was perfectly positioned for an extended session of wake surfing.  It was moving up from beneath the Harahan and Frisco and Memphis-Arkansas Bridges, so I could make my leisurely way down to it and then surf the waves back upriver.

Maybe these waves were especially well tuned to my particular skill set, but whatever the case, I felt like a surfing stud as I carried my speed from one wave to another, linking runs.  Having spent the last couple of weeks sort of puttering through workouts, it felt good to feel like I was doing something successfully again.

This morning I paddled the ski to the mouth of the harbor again, and found no barge traffic on the river.  So I returned to the marina and got in the whitewater boat for the first time in over a week.  I did a bunch of stroke drills and Eskimo rolls.

Of course, I'm still looking ahead to the Grand Canyon trip, and unfortunately that means keeping an eye on the Dragon Bravo fire on the North Rim.  By the end of this past week it had grown to over 111,000 acres and was just 9% contained.  The smoke appeared very bad, especially in the first 80 miles or so of the Colorado River below Lee's Ferry.

On Friday evening I chatted on the phone with Emily, one of the members of my party, and I remarked that keeping my eyes glued to the fire situation probably wasn't very good for my mental health.  Her response was to order me to take the weekend off from looking at fire data.  "Promise me," she commanded, and reluctantly I said, "I promise."  And so, both yesterday and today, I have stayed away from the app and the websites I've been using to follow the firefighters' progress.  I don't say "I promise" unless I mean it.  Tomorrow morning I'll look back at those things because each Monday I send an email out to the group, and I want them to be aware of what's going on out in the Grand Canyon.  It has indeed been a good thing to take a break from that--it's not like my being informed up to the minute is going to change anything that's happening.  I'm hoping that when I do check tomorrow morning, maybe things will be a little bit better than they were, rather than worse.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Paddling, pedaling, and managing these uneasy feelings

I rode my bike both Monday morning and yesterday morning.  One thing about bike riding is that it creates its own wind chill.  It's why I don't like to ride in the wintertime, but in very hot periods like we're having right now, it makes riding not so bad at all.  Staying out of direct sunlight helps too, and the Greater Memphis Greenline, where I do most of my riding, is shaded along almost all of its length.  It's a "rails to trails" project, and thick stands of trees were allowed to grow over the decades that it was a railroad.

I normally paddle on Tuesday, but this week I took Tuesday off from paddling.  The main reason was that my mother needed me to drive her to and from an appointment with her eye doctor, but I was also just tired and feeling that I needed a break.  It actually was kind of nice just to sit in the doctor's office waiting room and read a book and not think about training or any other worries for a while.

I made it back to the riverfront this morning and paddled the surfski for an hour.  I checked the Mississippi and found it deserted, so I stayed in the harbor and did a few up-tempo pieces.

The news has not been good over on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.  I've been seeing and hearing the word "historic" used to describe the Dragon Bravo fire, which has grown to over 105,000 acres as of this writing.  The fire has dropped to as low as 4% contained, because as the fire has spread the contained portion represents a smaller portion of the overall acreage.  (By this afternoon, that figure had improved to 9% contained.)  The weather has continued to be a firefighter's nightmare: apparently the humidity has been at record lows in the last couple of weeks.  Monsoon rains are supposed to be common at this time of year, but lately such events have been nonexistent.  Just today I read that "fuel moisture content is below that of kiln-dried lumber."  I'm a woodworker and I know very well what that means.

The fire is spreading primarily northward.  One reason for hope is that in some places it's likely to run out of fuel, either because of burn scars from recent years or because of barren, non-wooded land.  It seems fairly unlikely that the fire will get any closer to Lee's Ferry, the starting point of my trip.  Still, I'm worried about smoke.  Even if firefighters were to get the thing fully contained right now, it would take a while for the fire to burn out and smoke production to subside.

Meanwhile, as usual, there's absolutely nothing I can do.  I'm just continuing along with my preparation as if the trip is going to go off without a hitch in just under four weeks.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Monday photo feature

A Mr. John Dillon posted this photo to the Grand Canyon Private Boaters group page on Face Book.  It was taken last Wednesday, July 23, on the Colorado River some 65 miles downstream from Lee's Ferry.

What would I do if I didn't have something to worry about in the weeks leading up to a major wilderness trip?  Right now the Dragon Bravo fire is giving me plenty.  Burning up on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, the fire has availed itself of extremely dry, windy conditions to swell to over 50,000 acres by this morning.  Firefighters were reporting that the fire was 26% contained for much of the last week, but this morning it's been knocked back to just 13% contained.  Sigh.  I sure hope the weather becomes more cooperative in the coming days.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.

Paddling a lot and getting tired

We've had perhaps a little bit of a break in the weather this weekend.  It's still plenty hot, but the intensity of the heat hasn't been quite as terrible as it was during the last week.  The forecast contains some hope for more relief by the end of this coming week.

Yesterday I paddled the surfski from the dock to the mouth of the harbor, and found no barge traffic out on the Mississippi.  So I returned to the dock and got in the whitewater boat.  I did forward stroke drills, backstroke drills, spin drills, Eskimo rolls... all kinds of stuff.  Then I put my boats away and washed up under the hose.  In the summertime, the moment when I've finished paddling and taken a cool hose bath is often the best I feel all day.

This morning I paddled the ski back to the harbor's mouth, and found an upstream-moving barge rig positioned so that I would have to gain on it a little to have any hope of surfing its best waves.  I paddled up along the Tennessee bank until I reached the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, and then ferried over to the far half of the river that the towboat was navigating.  By the time I got over there I had missed out on the best waves, and I was tired from all the hard paddling I'd done just to get to that point.  Actually, I think I might have been feeling tired even before I got in the boat.  Some days that's just how it is.

In other news, out on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon the Dragon Bravo fire seems to be raging.  It sounds like the weather this past week could not have been worse for fighting a fire.  The fire's acreage has quadrupled over the last week.  My launch date is four weeks from Wednesday... two weeks ago I was hoping six weeks would be enough time for the fire to get under control; a week ago I was hoping five weeks would be enough; and now I'm hoping four weeks will be enough.

For more information on what this blog is about, click here.