Kayaking - Red River - A Perfect Day

Red River                                                           11.6 miles                  1135.2 total
Average Speed 3.2 mph, Max Speed 6.9 mph
River at 5 ft level, Temperature in the 80's and no humidity, perfectly blue skies
Me, Scotty, Patsy, Jerry

Gentle Flow
Good Friends
Beautiful Blue Sky
Nice Temperature
Good Conversation
Peanut Butter Sandwich

Enough Said!

Take Out at Red River Canoe

See Julie.  See Julie take pictures.  See the picture.

Good timing - we saw a train going over the trestle.

Me doing what I love!

Here I come!

Kayaking - Dyer's Creek - Freedom!

Dyer's Creek                                                          3.6 miles                     1123.6 total
1:30 paddling time


I have the best husband ever.  I had my knee surgery on May 30 and the recovery can be very discouraging and I think I was slipping into depression.  It hasn't been fun spending my summer doing PT when I'm usually gardening, traveling or kayaking!  So Scotty said, "Let's go to Dyer's Creek!"  And I jumped up.  Well, I really held onto the armrest, pulled myself out of the chair with my second best leg and ran, okay.... hobbled to the door.  Imagine, calling an old dog to go for a walk. Dyer's Creek is an inlet off of the Cumberland River and very calm with minimal current.  It was splendid!  I was able to sit with my left leg stretched out, propped up by my right leg.  It was only an hour and a half, but it was probably the best hour and a half since May 30!  Kayaking is truly medicine for the soul!  :)

Kayaking - Harpeth River - River Glass

Harpeth River - River Glass                                                    10.1 miles                1120 total
Me, Scotty, Ethan, Scott & Rachel Wainwright
3 hours 12 minutes, Avg Speed 3.2, Max Speed 7.4 mph


Great day, beautiful weather, good flow.  Rachel likes to walk along the banks and look for river glass.  I found a few pieces and think I may start looking also on our trips.

This is me going under the fallen tree - haha!

Kayaking - Yellow Creek - Bald Eagle

Yellow Creek - Bald Eagles                                                  5.7 miles
Ethan, Scotty and me
2 hours 23 minutes, Avg Speed 2.4 mph, Max Speed 4.6 mph


My last weekend - Yikes!  We look at the weather and the rain is supposed to be coming down around 3:00.  So at 11:30 we quickly load up the kayaks and head to Yellow Creek.  The river is not as raging as last weekend and we cross the Cumberland quickly.  But, Yellow Creek appears to have a much faster flow.  We paddled up almost to the fallen tree, but we noticed that the current is really strong just before the bend in the creek.  Knowing that rain may be coming down soon because we see many ominous clouds above us, we turn around.  The final lap up the creek took us 30 minutes.  When we turned around to go downstream, this same lap took 20 minutes.  So yes, the creek is flowing faster today!  It was an uneventful trip until we got close to the Cumberland River and we saw a bald eagle flying above us.  It soared and showed off for us for several minutes.  Sometimes I just love our kayaking trips!

Kayaking - Yellow Creek

Yellow Creek                                                                          7.6 miles          1104.2 miles total
75-82degrees, blue skies
Average Speed 2.7 mph, Max Speed 4.9 mph

Time is running short before my knee surgery so Scotty is indulging me by kayaking with me whenever possible.  Yellow Creek is nearby and our go-to paddle.  Today was windy so crossing the Cumberland was especially fun.  It felt like riding the waves on many of the waves.  We passed only a few people on Yellow Creek today.  It's still especially high, the beaver dam is still gone and there's a boat dock that we pass that's still under water.  Once again we were able to paddle over the huge tree that fell down across the creek.  Today we paddled as far as we could and got to the 'end'.  What?!  That's never happened.  We got to a place where many trees were down and we just couldn't see the creek going any further.  With the wind and the extremely still water, it seemed like a long paddle back across to the Cumberland River to our starting point.

The End.  We couldn't kayak any further.