Things haven't been going quite as well as they might for the past few days. I moved into the Watoga State Park River Side Campgrounds a few days ago hoping to paddle the Greenbrier River and hike the Greenbrier River Trail. That night we had a monstrous rain storm. Lightning and thunder were moderately heavy and there were no winds to speak of. But the rain just poured down for close to 6 hours and it was heavy. I ended up in the middle of a small lake. The tent held up well but I still had to tear it down the next day to dry out the bottom and the ground cloth.
The next day I realized I hadn't paid my web host for the web site. I thought the three month payment was due in September, but no, it was due in August and it was due now! I went right out and mailed the payment in but, at this time, don't know if I made it in time or not. I guess if you're reading this, I managed to get things straightened out somewhere along the line.
On the way back from mailing payment (a 15 mile drive), the oil light in the truck came on. Great! I'm 50 miles from anywhere, 10 miles from the campground and I've got no oil pressure. I limp back to the campground but what am I gonna do late on a Friday, way out in the boonies? So I sit and worry all weekend, can't go anywhere and can't do anything except go for some long walks.
First thing Monday I call a tow truck to tow me to Lewisburg, 50 miles away. He was surprisingly reasonable. I got down to the Dodge dealer and of course they didn't know when they'd be able to get to it. I walked to a motel a couple miles away, lugging the laptop and a backpack, thinking I could at least get the web site updated (if the web host hadn't shut me down already) and take care of 3 months of email (and junk mail).
Plugged the laptop in but couldn't get it out of sleep mode, which it shouldn't have been in in the first place. For the past year I've been charging the battery with an adapter connected to the igarette lighter in the truck. Seems the laptop has become addicted to 12volt electricity and doesn't like house current anymore. It didn't want to run off the battery either. Damned if it doesn't still run off the 12volt though. I have some more playing around to do with it. In the meantime you can be sure I back everything up. This was on top of having spilled some tea on the keyboard a several weeks ago. I lost a few keys but can still muddle along and do what I want.
I walked back to the Dodge dealer and finally got a pleasant surprise. The truck was already fixed. It wasn't the oil pump after all but the switch-oil sending unit that went bad. I didn't have low oil pressure at all but the unit was sending false signals.
So here I am now at the Elk River Wildlife Management Area. The two campgrounds in the area are the worst federal ones I've seen. They're well maintained but nothing but grass with the sites jammed on top of each other. You'd think with hundreds of thousands of acres they could spread the campsites out a little more and have a tree or bush here and there. I finally found a site with a little privacy but didn't notice the nearby generator. Oh well!
I put in from the Gerald R. Freeman Campground boat ramp into the Holly River about 9:30am this morning. The idea was to paddle the mile or two out the Holly River to the Elk River. On the topographical map, lots of contour lines indicate many mountains rising up from the Elk River so that should be pretty impressive.
I paddled along the narrow river in the direction I had seen a boat going yesterday, thinking that was the way to the Elk River. Wrong! I guess the guy was coming back from the Elk River, not going out.
The Holly River is about 50 feet wide at this point and 3-4 feet deep. I passed a couple dozen Canadian Geese and a few ducks. One side of the river had nicely forested slopes while the other side was the campgrounds.
After passing a branch on the right, I passed under a bridge at the end of the campground and ran into some shoals. I was paddling into the current and I thought it passing strange the Holly River flowed out of the Elk River rather than into it. In any case, the Holly River seemed to flow downhill all the way and I, of course, was paddling uphill. I didn't really have anything else to do so I wasn't too upset in having to get out and wade through the shallow water, pulling the boat along behind me.
I passed shoal after shoal. There wasn't much sense in getting back in the boat at the top of a set of shoals because after a short stretch of flat, calm water there would be another shoal. The water was only a foot or so deep and that just wasn't deep enough to get the blade in the water for a decent power stroke. And it was playing hell on the blade as it would hit rock after rock. After a while, the only time I got back in the boat was when the water became to deep to wade through.
After an hour and a half of this the river narrowed down to 30 feet or so and was consistently only 1-2 feet deep. At this point the gnats, which had been in my face all the way, became a little too much. On a longish stretch of flat water I got in to paddle simply to get away from them. The motion of the stroke helps keep them at bay plus I could move a little faster.
The Holly River was very pretty with some nice rocky bluffs and lots of rhododendrons along the way. But I was getting tired of all the wading and turned back just as a sprinkle of rain started. It had been overcast all morning and looking at the sky now I could see it was much darker. The way it thunders and lightning up here in the mountains I figured I was doing the smart thing in turning back.
The bottom of the boat was constantly crashing over rocks in the shallow water as I worked my way down stream. And then the rains started. And then the rains came harder and harder still. I had my Gortex rain coat on but I didn't have a spray skirt with me so the rain was just pouring into the cockpit. I finally remembered the trash bag I had stowed under the PFD and draped it across my legs. When it filled up with water I just dumped it over the side.
And then I heard thunder in the distance. And then a big boomer seemed to crack directly overhead scaring the crap outa me. And then I saw the lightning. And then I saw a big rocky outcrop. And then I got my butt off of the water.
The outcrop jutted out about 5 feet, with about 8 feet of headroom and I pulled the kayak up under it. This seemed like a good time for lunch and a good spot as well. Most of the thunder was off in the distance but whenever I did see lightning, the thunder was only 3-4 seconds behind it and was pretty loud. I was hoping this wasn't going to be another one of those 6 hour rains but it did look like it was going to last a while. Good thing I brought a book along.
45 minutes later it was still pouring and I was getting impatient and preparing to launch. I hadn't heard any thunder or seen any lightning in 5-10 minutes. I vaguely recalled some rule about that but couldn't remember what. It was still raining pretty hard but fortunately it let up as I pushed the kayak back into the water. As it turns out I was only 5 minutes from the bridge at the edge of the campground.
When I got to the fork in the river I had passed earlier I turned up it, thinking this must be the way to the Elk River. There seemed to be plenty of water but that crapped out in a short distance. There was no way I was gonna try to wade my way up that fork.
That left only one direction so I paddled past the put in and continued on for another half mile or so. Down this way I saw a couple of channel markers before I quit. There was still plenty of water and things still looked promising up ahead. I'll pick up and continue in this direction tomorrow.