Berkshires beckon

    Last weekend I took a 4 day weekend and headed for Al's cabin in Colrain Mass.. The idea was to paddle the Deerfield River and explore some of the rapids along it's length. There are a few rafting outfitters that do trips in the area into class III, IV and V rapids, we scouted the class III section and decided due to water and air temperatures, 38 and 48 respectively, and the type of kayaks we have we would stick to the more benign I's and II's.
    Good choice. We did a five mile stretch of the river and there was plenty of fun to be had and a much smaller chance of going swimming. One of the highlights was watching an Osprey snatch a fish out of the river about a  hundred yards ahead of us. The sun would come out occasionally and we were almost to warm.
  We drove up into Vermont and stopped at a covered bridge, amazing wood work, all post and beam, pegged together. We did not get the $2 fine.
  The next two pics are of our take out point on the river, the one after that is of the potholes in the rock created by erosion. in that area they are from 6-36 feet in diameter to give you some scale, the ones visible are in the 6-8' range.
  The next pic is of a waterfall just down the road from the cabin, they are numerous in the area. I will have to get back and do a series of pictures of just the waterfalls in the area.
  I will also have to get my motorcycle there and spend a few days riding the endless dirt roads that stretch north into Vermont. Dualsport heaven.   
 

First paddle of the year

    I saw Cody at the store and we decided to head to Hemlock Lake for a paddle the next day, Easter Sunday, and it turned out to be a glorious day. We put in on the south end and headed up the inlet through the marsh. When we were still at the launch we could hear a noise but could not identify it, as we got closer to the marsh we figured out it was what must have been thousands of frogs croaking, chortling and making a heck of a racket. They were all around us in the marsh but we never actually saw one. We did see a couple Bald Eagles, an Osprey, ducks, geese and Blue Herons.
   We made it about a mile and a half up the inlet had to carry around a few trees piled up across the creek, paddled over 3 washed out beaver dams and finally had to turn back when it got to shallow.
  It was a beautiful day and we heard more than one group of fisherman lamenting the fact that they were in big trouble having stayed out to long and were late for Easter dinner.