The Anniversary Trip

I let S sleep in. As I wrote yesterday, it's the time of the year when an early start to beat the midday heat and sun is not needed. We put in on Pond Brook, or Pond Cove as I think of it. While there is an unpaddleable brook above here, the lower mile became a cove when this section of the river was dammed in the 1950's. 

We cross the cove, it's just 20 yards, and paddle out in the shade of the forest, and stay in that shade hugging the southwest shore downriver. The big storm that came through 2 weeks ago has left the water clearer than normal. This section tends towards algae blooms in midsummer, and while the water isn't clear, I can see down well past the tip of my paddle. 

The sky is clear with a light wind out of the south. It is quiet. We see just 3 small motorboats, and about a half dozen paddlecraft, but from a distance. It is our 37th anniversary and we don't say much... today this is a perfect, calm, and peaceful place to think and paddle. We cross the river about a 1/2 mile above the dam and follow that shore back. S tells me that she's not up for a long trip, and I have to tell her that we are already on our way back. 

We stop briefly in one of the small inlets that I am familiar with. It has a small waterfall at the far end, but we cannot get there. There is a new pile of boulders that fills about 2/3 of the width. I'm not sure where the boulders came from. They may have come down the gully in a flash flood, or it may have been a small outcrop on the side that crumbled. The boulders are all clean without any moss on them (and the water level is more than a foot higher than normal) so they are recent.

With that, we continue up the shore, cross the Shephaug, cross the main river, and head back up Pond Cove.