Thank the river gods for earplugs; they make Steve’s snoring sound like purring. I slept like a baby.
Packed up, put the wheels on the boat, and hauled everything up the stupidly steep launch road and then the two miles down into town. We tucked it under a covered bridge by a local park while we got hot breakfast at the local diner to check the weather report again.
RAIN! THUNDERSTORMS! COLD! Awesome. On the bright side, they had good maps and free wifi, and the waitress only told us we were “out of our damned minds” the once. We sent a few messages to update folks on our whereabouts and timeline and reassured our parents that we still weren’t dead and weren’t planning on it any time soon. I bought a wildly overpriced bottle of Jameson (after helping the store owner pin down her cocker spaniel to apply flea and tick treatment) and we were on the river once again.
The river portion went a bit more smoothly, which was good because the water was now ICY FUCKING COLD. Two minutes in the water and your feet were totally numb. Steve managed not to send me face-first into any substantial trees; fly fishermen served as the only real obstacles; and we only had to get out of the boat when the depth gave us no other choice. We had a nice lunch in Shinhopple by a defunct facility called Al’s (“the river was his world, the fishermen were his friends”) and the rain held off right up until the point where we pulled up at a ballfield about five miles upriver from Hancock.
A guy mowing the lawn told us we could camp in the picnic pavilion since there was a tornado warning (!!!) and it would provide some shelter. It was a sweet setup; all our gear was hanging from the rafters and was fully dried out, we had a leisurely dinner on a real picnic table, and Steve was laughing at me for bothering to set up my tent in a back corner while he strung his hammock from the ceiling anticipating a comfortable night safely tucked out of the light drizzle that had moved in. He even went so far as to shake his fist at the sky and scream “YOU CALL THAT A STORM?”
Never one to be mocked, nature countered. Within five minutes the wind had picked up and ripped most of our gear out of the pavilion and onto the adjacent ballfield. Our brush with death for the day came in the form of a sprint through the outfield chasing down wayward socks and first aid supplies by headlamp and lightning as horizontal sheets of rain battered us senseless.
Fortunately, one point in the pavilion stayed dry- the back corner where I had pitched my tent. As we huddled together in the one place protected from the raging thunderstorm, listening to the rafters and sheet metal roofing creak in a subtle threat of full liftoff, we laughed uproariously at what lovely weather we had for our relaxing river trip.
Note to self: if Steve is making fun of me, I’m probably doing something right.