Kayaking the Yadkin, taking-out excitement
October 9, 2009






















A goodly amount of rain is pouring down out there this morning. Good on us for kayaking yesterday when the sun shone fine on us all day long. In fact, it was a gorgeous morning - Rowdy went outside to have a gravel bath in the sun.

Excitement on our part; even Greg, Holly Ridge owner, was enthusiastic about putting us on the river. He and Chris took the Toter to our trip’s end point. When they returned, we loaded the boats into Greg’s trailer and got to know him a bit while he drove us to our put-in. Evidently, the county owns some parcels along the Yadkin that are used by riverers. Had to photograph some awesome fungus forests before we headed out.

The Yadkin as it runs through here is very wide, deep in places and very rocky. We encountered boulders treacherously out of sight just below water level throughout our six hours on the river. It would be impossible to take a power boat through here.

Greg’s so-called “few little riffles” turned out to be numerous class 2 rapids, perhaps because the water level is lower than he’s accustomed to. Because we are inexperienced kayakers, it was a little alarming at first. The second one scared me going in, but turned out, as did the others, to produce a bit of an adrenaline rush, fairly fun to navigate them. Some were pretty long runs; we thought we were pretty hot stuff for doing it.

We troll-fished along the way, occasionally pausing to cast, but to no avail. I hearken to the old adage: “A bad day of fishing is still better than a good day at anything else.” We pulled up on a bank once to stretch our legs and snack. Turned out what looked like wilderness from down on the water gave way to a corn field up on the level.






















We floated and paddled and explored up one tributary creek and another river that flowed into the Yadkin, probably the Mitchell River. The current on the Yadkin was mostly too strong to proceed upriver, but the Mitchell





















not so, so we enjoyed a very picturesque paddle there until we came to a rapids that precluded our going further.

The clue for our take-out was the bridge; we were to leave the river on the left just before it. Unfortunately, when Chris dropped off the truck, he hadn’t gone down to look at the water, so when we approached the bridge and saw that we were coming into a class 3 rapids, things got a little hairy.

As we were close to the left bank, Chris couldn’t see the exact spot of our river departure and there was the small matter of that extensive very rocky whitewater area. It might be pertinent to point out that this place is called “Rocky Ford” because it was one in the olden days.

How we ended up where we ended up is somewhat jumbled in my mind. I remember that Chris was in front of me and he hung up on a rock. I panicked because I was about to pass him and proceed into a maelstrom I knew I had no business being in, so I bailed for shore, that is to say I stopped the only way possible at that juncture: I crashed headlong into the bank and began grabbing for overhead branches to stop my continuation downstream. That was unsuccessful at first but finally I was able to cling to something that didn’t break.

Not having a clue what I was approaching, I had my sandals off and loose stuff in my boat, binoculars abound my neck. In other words, I was wholly unprepared to shoot a class 3, even if in my wildest nightmares, I should choose to do something that crazed.

In the meantime, Chris was just below me on a large rock but still in a heck of a current. With one hand clinging to the branch, I barely held my boat with my right foot out of the boat, toes scrunched into the river bottom. I managed to get left sandal on my foot one-handed, but couldn’t get the other foot back into the boat because I couldn’t hold against the current with just the branch; I had the boat lodged up against my leg.

Then Chris got his boat semi-secured on the rock and came to my rescue. He held my kayak so I could get my other shoe on and we walked the boat down to his rock in the shallower water along the bank. His boat started slipping away, so I grabbed it, but fell onto the slippery rock in the process. He grabbed his boat (I think he had both at that point) and his paddle fell out heading pell-mell downstream (and we know what they say about that). I snatched the paddle, got it stopped but not safely secured because I fell again in my haste to save the oar.

Eventually, both of us, both kayaks and all our gear were perched precariously on our rock with the water literally boiling around us, so it was time for my little letdown cry. I didn’t dawdle long with it, quit sniveling, felt a little better after releasing some anxiety. Chris thought we might put the boats into the water below our rock, but it seemed impossible to get into them in that current only to be swept into the rocks out of control.

Besides our lives, we were concerned about the camera that Chris had hanging on his neck, so he got to the drybag in the back of my boat, stowed the camera, and proceeded to rescue everything. He walked in the river right up against the bank several trips back and forth to take equipment, me and both boats out. Wow, there’s nothing like dry land under your feet after a scare like that.

After I photographed and assessed the situation from the bank, I saw that there’s a perfectly nice take-out on the other side, one that can be gained without traversing difficult rapids (the river is very wide right there), but it belongs to a commercial outfitter who doesn’t want others using it - hmmmph!

Seems that Greg knows the take-out is precarious, but 1. doesn’t realize what it’s like at this particular low river level, and 2. I’m guessing that he thinks we are more experienced than we are because we own our boats.

Next time, I will be doing a little more questioning about the conditions and my informants’ knowledge of the river. Greg says he mostly puts in playtime canoeists who paddle back and forth in the lakey conditions at the spot he put us into the river.

Greensboro research, wet driving . . .

Today, I am feeling pretty beat up but ready to tackle some more genealogy. We drove to Greensboro in rain so heavy the visibility was nearly nil at times. By the time we got there, the rain had ceased.

Greensboro is a large city, I think, certainly nothing like the small Boonville that we are staying near. The downtown was attractive and nice with lots of new interesting buildings and obviously a lot of cultural attractions and museums. The main library lacked parking for the Toter. Little on-street availability, we were instructed via signs to park in the multistory garage that would not accommodate our height with kayaks on top. Across the street was the children’s museum with its own parking lot. Upon request and upon inspection to be sure we weren’t lying about our boats, we were allowed to land there for the day.

The cities of Greensboro, Winston-Salem and High Point constitute what is known as the Triad, a major commercial hub in southeast America.

The library was impressive in size, architecture, indoor sculptures and history collection. We scored with lots of Quaker material, and marriage, will and deed documents for our local families: Armfield, Brown, Hamilton, Humphries, Moon and Hoppes. It appears that we will not find any marked burials of our ancestors here, but did get some good background on where they lived and the Friends groups to which they belonged. This foray into research has not left much more to do here, perhaps a bit of casting around, but nothing definitive to do right now.

This country is some of my very favorite of what we have seen during our now-nearly eight months out total from this and last year. It is hilly but not forbiddingly mountainous, heavily forested, but enough cleared for agriculture and development to feel relatively open, lots of rivers and creeks - really just exceptionally pretty country. Boonville seems pretty spread out, with lots of rural-type attractive residential neighborhoods.

We are looking forward to a weekend of seeing the sights, fishing, cookie factories, fishing, wineries and fishing.