Nothin' Lazy About the Alleghany
by Denise Janus
Happy 4th of July! And oh how happy we were to get up early and canoe another 23 miles to stay on schedule. We got on the water around 9 a.m. We normally cruise the river at anywhere from 4.5 mph. to 6.5 mph. Today we were excited because we hit some rapids that sent us up to a warp speed of 10 mph! That didn’t last long, however, because we had to fight a lot of boat traffic on the river. A holiday weekend on the water usually results in battling the wakes from recreational boaters. For us it resulted in clever comments and curious looks from everyone!
Here’s what people said: “Hey, looks like a lot of work!” or “You got a sail for that?” or “You need a motor on that thing!” or the simple “Stroke, stroke, stroke!”
As we made our way down the Alleghany, not only did the river get bigger, so did the boats! As we headed into the last stretch of our daily mile quota, two ladies on a jet ski came along side us to say they’d seen us in the paper. They asked where we planned to take out. We told them, and they weren’t so sure that was a good choice. We took them up on their offer to take out at a local ramp a mile north of our original take-out sight, which was just before a lock.
They cautioned us that cell phones didn’t work in that area of the Alleghany, so we would have no communication with land support. Just as we were wondering how we could get in touch with our land support – Chris Trunick and Tommy, Chris came running from the woods. He had seen us from a mile down the river. As so often has happened on this trip, things worked themselves out and we got off the water and made our way to camp on a playground in Ford City.