Trip east: water features

We went paddling on the upper Guadalupe River yesterday, and had a great time (the water level was perfect). But I deliberately didn't take my camera along since I'm so backed up with untold stories and unused photos from our trip back east.

Since a pleasant paddle is on my mind, though, I thought I'd give you a look at some of the many various rivers, streams, lakes, etc., that we saw (and interacted with) on the trip.

First, the closest interaction.

After picking up raft #1 (the surprise raft; see this post for pictures of the rafts) we actually had the opportunity to use it. We took a short paddle on the Rockcastle River in Kentucky. The photo on the left is Henry in the back seat of the raft (I'm in the front one—it swivels!) taking a break from trying to learn to row it with the oars. (We ended up giving up on the oars and made pretty good time just paddling.)

Here's a picture that shows how lovely this river is. Although it was not moving as much as we'd expected, so the paddle was very good exercise.

You will also notice the downed trees. This picture is looking back upstream, so we obviously made it past these obstacles. We squeezed between the big clump of green in the middle of the picture, a small island, and the roots of the downed tree on the right.

Little did we know at this point that we had a much tighter squeeze ahead. A bit further downstream there was a fallen tree that extended across the entire river! We did eventually get past it, but it was not easy. We had to pull the raft over a large rock on the bank were the top of the tree was resting. I slipped on a slanted face of the rock and smacked my shin (a body part that I'm very hard on when paddling, historically). But a bigger almost-disaster happened while we were trying to get the raft over the rock: I forgot that my camera was around my neck and not in its dry bag. Horrors!

Long-time readers of this blog might remember how feisty and robust my little camera is. But I was pretty sure that I'd finally done it in. On the right is a sample picture taken with it not too long after the dunking.

But, I kept it open and in the sun as much as I could for the rest of the paddle, and opened it up and held it out the car window while we drove the rest of the day, and it seemed to dry out pretty well. I was able to take pictures with it the next day that looked as good as my pictures usually do. What a great little piece of technology! [I think its electronics are damaged, though, as I can't set the time and date and now all my photos say they were taken January 1, 1980, at midnight. Where it came up with this date, I have no idea. So I think I'll be in the market soon for a new camera. Any recommendations? Please leave them in the comments.]

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On to other water features. And don't worry, none of these have such long stories attached.

We saw some more really lovely streams after our Rockcastle paddle. Here are a couple (a few more are in my last post):

Deep Creek (with a toober) near our Great Smoky Mountains campsite, in North Carolina

Henry taking pictures of kayakers on the Ocoee in Tennessee

Some rafters in a raft like one of ours on the Ocoee
(although I imagine they don't have to store this raft in their garage...)

We saw other types of rivers, too. From the small...

A car being ferried across the Green River in Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky

... to the much larger:

bridge across the Mississippi at Memphis, with the picturesque Pyramid peeping above the roadway
(I know you can't see the river here but it's under the bridge, trust me)

And lakes...

Nentahala Lake in North Carolina
(from which the world class whitewater river of the same name flows)

We got to see some great waterfalls, too, always a favorite photo subject with us. (See some great Welsh waterfalls here.)

The first two below were on our Deep Creek Campground hike in the Great Smokies.

Tom Branch Falls on the Deep Creek

Indian Creek falls, on a Deep Creek tributary

And here's one just outside the Historic Entrance to Mammoth Cave. It was rainy while we were there, so we got see this pretty fall, one that doesn't always run:

There were hard-to-classify water features, too, like this drip from the roof of Mammoth Cave...(maybe some of the rainwater from the fall shown above?)

The swimming pool seen from our astonishingly inexpensive motel room in Waynesville, North Carolina, in the foothills of the Great Smokies...


And the wonderful Achafalaya Basin in Louisiana, seen from the elevated roadway that IH-10 becomes to transport you over it. We were there at sunset, lucky to get views like this at the end of a very rainy day. A fitting close to this summary of the great waterways we encountered on the trip.