Urban Outcast Music: Hey Stranger or Wildfire by Mandolin Orange. Pick your own adventure.
OK, that was a shameless title in the vain search for more page views, its not that kind of story.
A month ago I was lounging with my soft serve cone at the Humdinger in Hoquiam and thinking it was finally time to bring the kayak down to the harbor. The Hoquiam River was smooth as glass and I convinced my summer engineering intern to tag along as the adult supervision.
We put in at the boat launch in downtown Hoquiam as the high tide was coming in and it did most of the work as we headed up river. Even at a leisurely paddle pace we were moving 4 mph, I could almost pretend I felt a breeze on my face. We passed the East Fork and then took a left onto the Little Hoquiam River. Another half mile and you are past the last of the houses/industrial lots and surrounded by forest.
By this time we had flushed the same poor heron for at least a mile and seen a few kingfishers but no sign of mammal life on this venture. It was at this point that it paid off to have adult supervision. We had flown up river and left to my own devices I was going to find where the river became a rivulet but the tide would not peak until 10pm so there would be no free ride back.
I could not convince the intern to tip so it's his fault there is no tale of a dramatic water rescue. Either way it was fun to see some new stretches of a river I drive by all of the time and looking forward to exploring it further.
To that end I have my Grays Harbor paddling tracker started. I have lots of work to do and this is just the zoomed in version, lots more rivers to explore to the west if I do not get distracted by other projects first.
