It was fairly windy in our favor as we started out in the morning. We were already making food time but I thought that we should take more advantage of the wind. Upswing the oars as a double mast and whatever strings and bunge cords we had accessible, I fastened a slap together tarp sail. It only worked when the wind was directly behind us, and unfortunately the river took a change of direction in a couple of hours. We were happy to find that we were making our fastest time yet at a lightning fast five miles per hour. (With paddling)
Our excellent pace proved to be in vain. With twenty miles down, we approached lock 25, and noticed three tugs waiting on the side of the river. We continued on and saw two more tugs waiting outside the dam. We found a corner in the shores rock wall were sediment had built up forming a marshy area. Rather than passing the front barge we landed roughly there with four foot waves pushing us while we worked around the dozens of logs that had been pushed up there. We walked down to the lock and notices that there was a lot of people and activity. When we got to the fence that had an open gate, we were just about to enter when a security lady came out of the security post. She was kind and helpful. She told us that the lock was closed until 7:00pm that night. They were doing maintenance. We chatted with her and a couple other officials that came out to us. Through these chats we eventually got word from the lockmater that we could camp in the little day park that they had next to the dam.
We returned to the canoe, secured it better and carried our stuff the quarter mile back to the park. At this point I was starting to get hit with a second wave of being sick.
We had a very kind and strange encounter to go still before bed. While we were up reading a billboard about the "water trail", a guy showed up to walk his dog down the dams break-wall. We waved as he got out and Lilly showed her enthusiasm for his dog. He walked and we returned to our unsetup campsite. When he went back to his truck, he put his dog away and then started walking towards us with a box. We greeted each other when he was close and he set the box down and told us it was a box of snacks and asked if we wanted one. Unknowing that he meant the whole box, we accepted and took one. When we thanked him he told us that we could have the whole thing. We tried to refuse, but he was insistent. We talked a little, but it wasn't until the last couple comment followed by his quick departure that we realized that he probably thought that we were truly homeless. We couldn't do anything about it, as he was already gone, but we felt bad anyway. We did eventually decide that we should enjoy the generosity. It is great to know that there are some really good people out in this world that are willing to extend kindness to a stranger. We never even got his name as our encounter was brief, but thank you for the kind snack stranger.
No comments:
Post a Comment