I had July 5th off from work (thanks boss), so Scott and I drove about an hour south to canoe the Okatoma Creek, home of Mississippi's only "whitewater" (level 1) rapids (you'll see why whitewater is in quotes below). The Okatoma is so serene. Most of what you see is this:
Ignore my big mug and check out the "rapids" in the background. There are a few of these along the 8-mile trip, and they really are fun - just not in the North Carolina rapids kind-of-way (though, I don't know if people canoe those rapids)! You will notice that our boat is backwards in this picture - the swirl at the base of the rapids turned us around.
Another general scenery shot:
Scott, providing most of the effort required to move the canoe forward :)
Scott spotted this great blue heron in the woods. It was the biggest bird I have ever seen. We parked the canoe and I got as close as I could to get a shot. A long kelly green snake and I scared each other when I almost stepped on it (haven't been able to ID it) - but my muffled scream didn't scare off this bird. It was busy hunting and not at all worried about me.
We brought sandwiches and stopped on one of many sandbars for lunch.
The river was low, and in this picture you can easily see the rocky bottom. We had to get out and carry/push the canoe a couple of times.
It ended up raining torrentially (seriously) most of the second half of the trip. Here is the water in our boat between bouts of rain:
Needless to say, our towels were soaked! Next time we'll know to bring extras and leave them in the car.
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I have one final bit of news before I let you go enjoy your weekend. We are expecting a baby in January! That is the reason for my neglect of the blogging world recently. I'm going to try to get back to posting once a week now. Thanks for sticking with me!
5 comments:
That looks like fun! Chip and I want to go before the summer is over. Some crazy people did have canoes out on the class 3 rapids on the Nantahala. Haha.
Congratulations to you and Scott!
Wow, looks like a lovely place to canoe and a lovely trip (well, except for the rain I guess). It's nice to get away like that, isn't it. Love that heron!
It sure looks like a lot of fun. That might be somewhere I'd like to go.
CONGRATULATIONS! I'm so excited for both of you.
WHAT?! A baby?! I'll bet your mom is on cloud 9!! Congrats, honey!
First of all congrats on the baby! How wonderful!!!
I really enjoyed your canoeing photos. We've never been to the river before but after seeing your pics I think we would love it.
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