Last night I thought I finally heard the real voice of the rivers in my sleep. As I steadily gained coherence, I realized that it was not the elusive presence we had been seeking these past two weeks. It was the sound of a large pick-up truck full of some of the friendly locals screaming, "_____ kayakers!" and "welcome to South Carolina!" and "whooooo!!!" If you read yesterday's post about the place we camped, you can imagine how freaked out we were when we realized that we must have been sleeping in the graffitier's party spot. Woops?
We made some really awesome changes in our schedule today. During our briefing the previous night we all decided to wake up early to paddle out and get good mileage in before the heat of the day. 4:30 - 5:30 breakfast 5:30-6:30 packing and 6 departure. Well... we made it out by 6:30! And wow did it make a difference! We paddled 16 miles from 6:30 to 10:30. Had awesome PB&Js and took a nap under a busy bridge, then set off to find our campsite at 12:30.
6 hours later we still had not found a suitable sandbar to camp at! We ended up paddling 36 miles today, finally finding an old closed down boat ramp behind a thick outcrop of willow trees, at the recommendation of a friendly fisherman. Whew what a long day of paddling, our longest yet! We enjoyed some chili, had a short communications class, and fell asleep to some crazy awesome heat lightning (that later turned into a heavy rainstorm.)
I'd like to leave you dear friends with a song that spoke to me today on the river.
"What I love most about rivers is
you can't step in the same river twice;
the water's always changing, always flowing.
But people, I guess, can't live like that
we all must pay a price
To be safe we lose our chance at ever knowing...
What's around the riverbend.
Waiting just around the riverbend."
-Pocahontas (she knew what was up!)
