Picture of the week - A lovely tree

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

Joyce Kilmer

Nooksack River - 16 mile float

We decided to go rafting yesterday. This involves a shuttle.

We took one car to the Guide Meridian river access and left it there. We then drove to the Nugents Corner river access and started the preparations for getting on the river.

and we're off!

We found a nice spot for lunch that was easy to get to -

and my river guide (husband) found a nice (slightly cold) swimming hole -

After lunch we encountered a tricky spot with a lot of debris down. Part of rafting is learning to read the river. That is, you need to be looking downstream for the route. There is no backing up (usually), you are basically committed to make a good choice for following the current, watching out for back eddy's, pour overs, sweepers, rocks. logs etc. Whew!

We stopped along the river when we saw all of the debris for the best way to get through. It was difficult because there was a little corner and we couldn't see around it very well. We decided a log was probably all the way across and we should try to pull our raft through a shallow side channel. So we got out our tarp, laid it down and slid the raft over it.

and this is why we did it, as you can see, we wouldn't have made it through.

The river was quite low in several places -

but there was usually a way to get through.

We found a nice shady spot for another well deserved break. My husband does all of the rowing, my job is to look for hazards in the water and let him know when I see them. I'm very good at this ;-) 

We saw a bit of wildlife on this trip. The usual: Kingfisher, Blue Heron, Vulture, Seagull, Bald Eagle and even a Beaver swimming along the shore.

I managed to get a few shots of an Immature Bald Eagle along the shore.

(click on the photos to enlarge them)

This was the view up when we arrived at our take out spot. The under side of the Guide Meridian bridge -

After rafting comes the clean up. 

Time to take everything apart and put it in the car, then drive to get the first car from it's shuttle location, then home to unload everything and set the raft up in the yard to clean all of the sand and junk off of it and hope for a sunny day the next day so it can dry thoroughly before it gets packed up again.

By the time we got home it was nearly dark, so there will be no Thursday Trailblazer hiking report. I'm tired, and as much as I wanted to go up to Park Butte and the Lookout, I'm not too disappointed, I think we can find other things to do today -

as it's our 43rd wedding Anniversary!