New Territory

I put in on Alton Pond. I've almost been here before. Just below the put-in is the dam that holds back the Wood River creating Alton Pond. Below the dam is the last half mile of the Wood River, which enters the Pawcatuck, and coming up the Pawcatuck and that section of the Wood is how I almost got here.

Alton Pond

The day is excellent with a mid 70 temperature, clear skies, and little wind. The paddle up the pond is shorter than expected, because map makers include shallow wet areas as part of the pond. An actual river channel appears about a 1/3 of a mile up. The river meanders constantly and is frequently braided into a few channels, as one might expect in a swamp river. And of course, I make a few wrong guesses, but none that take me off the main river channel for very long. The most interesting of the missteps takes me up to an old mill that is built directly over the dam and channel. I figure out later that this channel is a diversion off of the Woodville Dam.

The marsh marigolds are still blooming, and blooming well. They are everywhere that there is any open sunlight. The pickerelweed and most everything else that I can name is done for the season.

A lone marsh marigold

Not quite an hour out, I come to the Woodville Dam. With a little looking about, I find the portage trail on river left. This takes me up onto a road, then across the Woodville Bridge, carefully avoiding a surprisingly surly fisherman, and back down a short path on river right. It's a easy hundred yard portage. I'd accidentally surprised the fisherman while he was staring into the water and he took a disproportionate amount of offense. Perhaps the only time in ten years that I've come across someone while canoeing who wasn't worth the time of day. Anyway, I wasn't able to make my standard, "good thing I wasn't a bear" joke. It took a half mile of paddling to flush him out of my head.
While there are several houses in this area, getting here I have seen just a few structures.

The wrong turn up to an old mill

Continuing upstream, this section of the river is mostly forest, once I leave the small pond above the dam. There is more deadfall in the water, but it can all be ducked under or paddled around. The current gradually picks up, eventually becoming a 2:1 flow (as in 2 hours to paddle up, 1 hour to return). As below, there are almost no houses in sight of the river.

The portage, from a distance

I paddle until I am about 2-1/2 hours out. There have been no road crossings except at the portage, and there are have been no man-made landmarks - landmarks that would stand out on a map such as power lines or road ends, so I don't know exactly where I am except that I can hear distant highway noise. I get to a log jam that needs to be climbed, so I take the hint and turn around. 

I run into the first people that I have seen on the water just above Alton Pond.

The dominant animal in the river has been turtles, of which I have seen dozens. Wood Ducks were regularly sighted, and they were the only Ducks that I saw. I also spotted 2 Great Blue Herons,a couple Kingfishers, one unidentified Sandpiper, and a small wayward Hawk (possibly a Sharpshin) that made a brief delusional run at a pair of fleeing Wood Ducks.