CT River Canoe Trip Part 8

We woke up to frost on the grass, and fog in the air. We went back to sleep.

When we woke up again, the fog had burned off a bit, and the sun came out. I rearranged the clothes on the line, to get them to dry in the sun for the morning. Todd made breakfast.

We listened to the radio, read, hung out and watched the clothes dry. After a few hours we were able to pack everything up into the canoe, and get back on the water again.

This day closely mirrored my idyllic vision of canoeing with the dogs. Nemo dozed at my feet, and Griffen napped at Todd’s. The sun was out. The river at this point is one oxbow after another, so we spent the day zigzagging down the river. Birds chirped, water lapped the canoe, Todd and I talked and joked. Beautiful. Perfect.

We had figured out later that with all the oxbows in the river we’d canoed 20 miles that way. But if we drove that distance on the nearby highway, it was actually about 5 highway miles.

Todd and I had decided that we were nervous about the snow forecast, as we didn’t bring any winter gear. We would need to end the trip that day. Never mind the fact that our clothing was still damp. Todd had seen in the guidebook a place to pull out that was about 5 miles away from Wells River, by the road, not by the river.

We canoed on. We saw a pair of kayakers on the river. We saw a river guide trying to get his boat up the bank, on to the trailer. We watched from the river as the guide and 2 other people were working to pull this boat out.

We trudged on to Newbury, where we would be pulling out. We beached the canoe on the boat launch, leashed the dogs and walked up the hill to access the situation.

Looking at the map, Todd said "OK, we're 5 miles away, and one of us is going to have to get the car on foot."

"OK, I'll go," I said.

To be continued.