Ocmulgee (Pope's Ferry to Waterworks Park)

 
Mom came up last weekend and brought Nico for a kayak trip.

 

We got up, had breakfast a la Eric, and loaded the vehicles.  Off we went to drop the last vehicle at Waterworks park.  We put in at Pope's Ferry, the river was listed at 4.5' at Dame's Ferry and around 1500cfs.  The run started out pretty good, but we quickly started running into shoals which became the story of the day. 

 

 
 We stopped less than an hour in when we found a swimming hole.  What a great way to cool off!

 

 

We have piece by piece completed the length of the Ocmulgee from Jackson to Macon.

 

 
Check out this strange flower we found on the island where we stopped to swim.

 
What we thought would be a 3-4 hour trip kept getting longer and longer, eventually ending at 7 hours.  What took the most time was Clay and Eric and mom getting stuck on rock after rock.  Mom and Eric dumped out at one point, losing her glasses and her chewbacca shirt.   Even though it was a long stretch it was one of the prettiest parts of the river.  I would like to do it again, but Clay isn't so sure.  He thinks maybe if the river was another 1.5 feet higher.

 
There were beautiful rocky outcroppings and sections with homes on the banks which provided some eye candy.

 
By the time we got finished we were so hungry we each devoured Five Guys burgers and fries in record breaking time.  

 

Kayak Trip with Friends

 

On Saturday we loaded up the Kayaks and Latoya came down with her 2 kayaks (one for her one for Lauren) and we went down to Macon to paddle the easy peasy stretch of the Ocmulgee.   It was Hot by the time we got ready to go.  There were a group of tubing folks getting in behind us and I was thinking that they had the idea.

 

There was a breeze though and enough shade along the sides of the river that we could get out of the sun from time to time.  The water level was a good bit higher than the time we went before and the current helped send us along.   The clouds were absolutely beautiful Saturday!  Perfect day for outdoor fun. 

It was bright and a lot of squinting went on (I do not like sunglasses for some reason.)  Clay was tickled pink that we had a calm section of river and we only beached 1 time.  That was a welcome change after our last adventure!

 

We stopped on a sandy area and had our picnic lunch, it was Latoya's first MRE.  Only Clay was in the mood for swimming so we loaded back up and headed downstream again.

Lauren apparently likes to have pictures of bridges she goes under so I snapped a couple of pictures for her and they were actually kind of neat.  This is where I-16 crosses the river in Macon, Ga.  

 

It took us about 4 hours total to finish this section with very limited paddling and a long stop for lunch.   We had a nice trip!  We even saw a little bit of wildlife (heron, garr, one big catfish, turtles, and other little fish).