Kayak Yakking and More: Kayaking - Caney Fork River

Saturday, August 10, 2013

Kayaking - Caney Fork River - Cave Exploring

Caney Fork River 8/10/13 Miles Traveled 9, Total 159.6
11:00-2:15 average speed 3.3 w/ Bowling Green Kayak Group
(Maria, Dawn, Jerry, Patsy, Tom, Barbara, Dwayne....to name a few, just another great group-26 total)
80 degrees, Half a mile into the paddle skies were dark and thunder, but it never rained!

We put in at the Center Hill Dam and took out at Betty's Island. The water was released at 10:00. I thought I'd see the water around the dam dramatically rise, but it did not. What we did see was that the current did significantly pick up. About a half hour into the trip, the skies darkened and we heard thunder. It looked like it might be another rainy day. Fortunately, it never did rain and it never got really hot. The water in this river is cold as it's pumped out of the dam from the bottom of Centerville Lake. It is a wide, beautiful river; not at all hard to navigate. We stopped about 5 miles down and ate lunch. A few miles after that was a cave. We had to hike up a steep, very muddy, slippery slope to get there. Only a few of us climbed up. It was a tall entrance into the cave. Dwayne walked in first to the back. Riley and I followed when I heard Riley say, "There's a chicken". "A chicken?" We tried shining a light on it and never could figure it out, but we did hear it growling. Yes, growling! Others came and looked at it. It was a mangled, disfigured bird that we finally decided was a buzzard. It did not like us being in it's cave. We managed to walk past it on the narrow path leading in. Nothing else of great interest in the cave. At the back it became very small and it didn't appear as if we could go any further. The view down into the river was cool. It was great looking down upon the brightly colored kayaks waiting for us. I have to say that my cortisone shot from 2 weeks before has definitely helped me. I was able to climb up and down without strain or great fear of hurting my knee! Hurrah! When I followed my path back down, my kayak was gone! Apparently it had floated away, but a member of the group had grabbed hold of it and another stray while we had been exploring. Another funny thing on this river happened. Here we had drove 2 hours to do this 9 mile paddle, and as we're putting in at the dam, who do we see? The Davis family from Clarksville! One of these days we will have to kayak with them instead of just bumping into them!