Swiftwater Rescue Class

We just got into this whole paddling thing this summer and here we are deciding to sign up Mandy and I for a swiftwater rescue class. The class is taught by some very experienced locals who have received training and certifications over the years from a national paddling organization. They are trained not only in how to conduct a swiftwater rescue, but also how to teach the swiftwater rescue skills and how to train other teachers.

What is “swiftwater rescue?” And why would we noobs be signing up? And why isn’t mom getting trained too? Here’s the course overview for the 20 hour class we took: Continue reading “Swiftwater Rescue Class”

Paddling School

This year, since we just bought boats, we decided to enroll in the ACC’sSchool of Recreational Paddling.’ In order to feel useful (I like to feel useful) I wrote this article about it for Arkansas Outside. Rather than writing a separate blog post about Rec School, I’m just going to plagiarize my own work and cut and paste it here.The Arkansas Canoe Club is about forty years old, and they’ve organized training weekends for thirty-seven of those years – Canoe School evolved into Whitewater School, and then about ten years ago they began offering a Recreational School as well.  That experience shows in the really good programs the club puts together.  Those good at organizing organize.  Other paddlers work to be certified instructors, and they teach the classes.  Experienced boaters who are trained and comfortable with safety hang toward the back of the groups, and are available to help students with fitting issues and one-on one instruction.  These are people who love what they do, and further, they’re GOOD at it.

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On Lake Ouachita, and Naps

By the middle of May, I was pretty much worn out.  For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been kind of ragged.  It was a tough end to the semester, and we’ve been shorthanded at work, and I’ve overcommitted myself on bike projects, and I just needed a break.  Bryan and I decided that, after Mandy left for Tulsa on Friday evening, we’d just disappear for a couple of days.  We chose Lake Ouachita for our getaway, since we thought it would be the quietest of the nearby lakes on a busy holiday weekend, and we put in at Buckville since it’s a faraway boat launch.

We didn’t get the quiet lake we’d hoped for, but we did manage to find our own private island on the edge of it. Continue reading “On Lake Ouachita, and Naps”

We Has Boats

Well, we did it.  After a couple of weeks of semi-intensive research both online and in the water, we settled on what we wanted, confirmed our choices on the lake during the Ouachita Outdoor Outfitters spring “Demo Day”, wrote the check, and picked up the boats.

We figure that this year, we’ll skip our usual out-of-state week-long vacation in favor of buying the boats and then taking a couple of super-long weekend trips to boat around in our home state. Continue reading “We Has Boats”

Little Maumelle River

 

We borrowed boats from our friends over at Arkansas Outside to try out a stretch of the Little Maumelle River.  There are so many things I love about central Arkansas.  Imagine being able to paddle a kayak for eight plus miles down a river, within the city limits of the largest city in your state.  We began at Pinnacle Mountain State Park and floated through a forest of cypress trees, ending our trip just past Two Rivers park, at the boat launch at the bottom of River Mountain Road.

Ivydog was nearly perfect.  Hayduke was terrible.  He and I ended up in a single kayak, hanging back out of sight of the rest of the group.  When he can’t see anyone else, he’s a lot calmer about being in the boat.

I wish I’d had a camera, because he was extremely excited today about lily pads.  We floated through big stretches of water that’s so still and shallow that lilies grow in big ‘fields.’  Hayduke thought it was great fun to hang his big head out of the boat and try to snatch the flat leaves in his mouth.  Once he grabbed a lily bud and pulled it up, four foot stalk and all.  He looked at me as if to say “well, I caught it, but now I don’t know what to do with it.”  We left a trail of leaves with bites taken out of them.

Hayduke is a nightmare on the water but he has so much fun it’d be sad to leave him at home.

Adventures in Dog Boating

In preparation of a future Buffalo River trip, we decided to spend the morning on Lake Ouachita.  We could try different kinds of kayaks and canoes, we figured, and we could check out how well the dogs would do on the water.

Ivy likes water but not too much, and she’s a little afraid of riding in cars, and she generally likes to sit up straight and be admired.  I predicted that Ivy would sit still in the middle of a boat and allow herself to be paddled around the lake like the princess that she is.  I was right.


Continue reading “Adventures in Dog Boating”

The Ocoee Trip, and The Accidental Spacecamp Visit

It’s our anniversary! There’s no need for wine and roses and chocolates and romantic cards. I got a new hammock, and we went on a road trip with Mandy and our great friends Britt and Debbie. And some pipe cleaners.

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I picked Mandy up from her ecology camp around lunchtime on Friday, somewhere between Hot Springs and Mount Ida. We stopped in Benton only long enough to pick up Bryan, and in Little Rock only long enough to switch cars at the Thompson’s. We didn’t arrive at the outfitters’ in Ocoee, Tennessee until the very small hours of Saturday morning.

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And on Saturday, we were up bright and early. I did a load of laundry for Mandy (who arrived home from camp with super-stinky stuff) and we hopped on a bus to the put-in point to float the upper and middle Ocoee. Britt and Bryan have floated it before but this was a first for Debbie and Mandy and I, and holy crap it was fun! I don’t think any of us stopped grinning the entire trip.
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When we got off the river, tired and giggly, we put some effort into searching out a Outback Steakhouse, consumed amazing quantities of food, and then went back to collapse into our camp. We headed home first thing Sunday morning, but didn’t get very far.

Britt grew up in the area around Birmingham, and cut his caving teeth in the pits in the neighborhood. Souda Cave is closed now but we parked at the gated road and walked to the entrance.

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Like so many other caves in the eastern and central US, it’s been closed to visitors because of the spread of white nose syndrome in bats.

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There’s a tourist cave in the area still open, though, and Britt wanted to show us. He explored Cathedral Caverns with his father when he was a kid, years before the cave was commercialized. It’s a beautiful cave, and they’ve done a pretty good job of setting up the tourist trails and lighting.

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The car trip through this whole area was fun. Britt and Debbie have spent so much time here caving that they’re both full of stories about ‘what’s in that hill over there’ and ‘the time we went to the cave that’s down this road.’ And those stories moved into ‘when I went to Mexico’ and ‘the first TAG Cave-In we did together.’

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It’s funny how much better you can get to know people on a road trip. We’ve spent lots of time with Britt and Debbie, but one thing we didn’t know is that the reason Britt grew up in Alabama: his dad worked for an engineering firm involved in the space program. So a quick side trip past the Space Center in Huntsville was a sort of requirement. We had no intention of doing more than peering in the windows, since we were pressed for time. But Debbie somehow wheedled the Front Desk Person into saying that we could go inside free since it was the end of the day. It’s five o’clock, and we’re in Alabama, and everybody has to go to work tomorrow. Should we stay? Of course!

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Britt and Mandy and I rode the Super Scary Giant Torpedo Thing. (This is probably not its real name.) Bryan rode the 4G with her, the bin that spins around and around until it makes you stick to the wall and wish you were dead. We did some other rides too, and got to see lots of interesting exhibits.

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And we got to see Spacecamp! Not only did we look at the building where the Spacecamp kids stay, we were under the shuttle when some Spacecamp student groups were spread out on the grass having class sessions. So we eavesdropped on them. Mandy and Britt say that they want to come back next summer and go to Spacecamp together. They’ve been funny all weekend, linking arms in parking lots and skipping and singing songs. They’re such sweet friends. If only the center would allow sixty year old men and twelve year old girls to go to Spacecamp together, I think they’d have a wonderful time.

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It was such a fun trip. We didn’t stop talking the whole time we were in the car, telling stories and laughing. I won’t admit what time we got back to Little Rock, but we all managed somehow to get a little sleep and show up almost on time for work on Monday. Was it the best road trip ever? I’m thinking it may have been.