The day began with low, menacing clouds. We took our boats down to the river at the put-in, which is right next to C-38, but steep, and the grass was wet and slippery. The road is busy here, but the shoulders are nice and wide, and there is a dirt lot a short distance down to park cars that aren’t shuttling.
We left Jacqui to defend the boats, and Sara and I tried taking the unpaved Manistee River Road south to the take-out at Cameron Bridge Rd. The mistake we made was trusting the road sign and the gazette, because the road marked Manistee River Rd forked into 2 dead-ends after a few miles. We went back to C-38 and took Deward Rd instead, which connected just fine, though we wouldn’t recommend it for low or 2WD cars, especially after a good rain, or a dry spell, and there was some logging in progress, even on the 4th of July weekend. According to GPS, once we got back into an area with signal, there is a Geronimo trail further east on C-38 that turns into a second, completely separate, Manistee River Rd, that connects to Cameron Bridge Rd. The moral of the story is, take the paved routes listed on the website, or take Deward if you trust your car.
We eventually made it back to the put-in, and got on the river (at 12.20pm!) The river was higher than usual, so we didn’t have to worry much about getting stuck on gravel bars. We only found a few beaver dams that were a challenge to get over, and only had to get out of our boats 2-3 times each, but there were a lot of fallen logs on the narrow river, and a bit of a current, so we got of lot of practice with our maneuvering skills, and Jacqui appreciated having her new little Pyranha Fusion kayak. I had my Hurricane Santee, which I had used on this river and worse many times in the past, but I finally hopped my way over one too many dams and put 3 little cracks in the bottom about halfway through the trip. I got my money’s worth out of my bilge pump for the rest of the trip!
Fortunately, the weather cleared, so we didn’t get wet from above, and it turned into a perfectly beautiful day for a paddle. The vegetation was lush with all the recent rain, and there were a lot of flowers and moss growing on old fallen logs and stumps sticking out of the river. We saw a bald eagle. Dewards landing, the lunch spot, was pretty far down the river, and it was hard to spot the stairs under the tall grass, but it was a good spot for a rest.
Not far north of the take-out, we ran into a pretty aggressive dog, who followed us around a bend and ran down into the river to bark at us, but he eventually left us alone once we were past his property. We didn’t see any other paddlers on this trip, just one fisherman, heard a few ORVs and the logging machines. The take-out was easy and close to the road.
We did find a couple of ticks on us after the trip, so beware. Jacqui's was a large dog tick so no danger of Lyme disease, but she's keeping watch for the other things that it might carry.
Our fearless Leader
One of so many beaver dams
No scooching over this one!
Wish I had a coracle!
The new downed trees
But the portage is good. Not muddy (yet), and short.
Sadly, Santees don't like this much scooching.