Canoeing

This weekend I went canoeing down the Juniata River with my girlfriend, Erin. We had a blast. We only got rained on once while on the water, and then we waited it out under a tree to minimize the soaking. We put in at the riverside park in Huntingdon, PA and took out about twenty miles downstream at Newton Hamilton. See the map. Look at the river rather than the road.

The wildlife was awesome. I had 44 bird species. Highlights include a Bald Eagle, 24 Common Merganser, and lots of Wood Ducks. We also saw a family of River Otter playing on some fallen trees along the bank. They were cute.

We camped on islands in the river. The first night we were sandwiched between the road and the railroad. Trains kept coming by every 10 minutes or so. Really, I think I’ve seen more trains that day than in my entire life. The second night was much quieter. There was a party going on upstream with a live band. We could hear them pretty well and they were playing good music too. It was a nice treat.

The trip was so much fun and I hope to be able to ride the river again before heading up north.

Similar Posts

  • Backpacking… sort of

    It’s good to be back on the trail. Backpacking has been absent from my life for quite some time, and I am excited to change that. On this trip, I hiked 2.5 miles and 1500 feet up to a forest service fire lookout that has been converted into a cabin for rent. Shorty Peak tops out at an elevation of around 6500 feet above sea level with a view that is as spectacular as it sounds. The mountain is located in Idaho’s Selkirk Mountains on a ridge adjacent to the ridge that hosts the US-Canadian border. When Heather found that…

  • Seven Devils on the Fourth of July

    What do you do when temperatures rise above 100º F? Seek relief at very high elevations. This June was one of the hottest on record for the northwest with several days above 100 degrees in Moscow. So when my friends proposed a backpacking trip for the Fourth of July weekend, i was a bit skeptical, especially given the location’s tendency to get hot and dry in the summer months. It’s also a very popular destination for holiday weekends, though it’s not usually accessible for the Fourth of July. So it could have been really crowded, or completely empty. They wanted…

  • Stevens Lakes

        The hike to Stevens Lakes itsn’t particularly hard, but it’s no walk in the park either. It’s about 2.5 miles and 1700 feet of vertical gain to the upper lake on a well-used and well-mantained trail. It starts off relatively steep and continues to climb steadily for the next mile before levelling out briefly as the trail emerges from a beautiful forest into an open basin surrounded by walls several hundred feet high. Just atop the headwall, 350 feet up, is the first lake, and Willow Creek drains from Lower Stevens Lake to drop over this ledge with…

  • Skiing

    I went skiing for the first time in over five years, and it felt like I never took a break. Erin and I went to Silver Mountain with Tyler, and Travis. Silver is the nearest ski area to Moscow and it’s not that bad. When the entire area is open, it’s got a vertical of 2200 feet, but we haven’t had enough snow to open the lower portion. But even with those few trails closed, the vertical was still a nice 1400 feet with some nice, lengthy runs. Silver is unique to all of the other ski areas I’ve been…

  • White Pine Loop & Bomber Too

    Last week, Clara and I had a day to ourselves, so we had a little adventure on a nearby trail. The white pine loop is a 3-mile hike from the White Pine campground off of Idaho Rt. 6. A one-mile (one-way) out and back spur takes us to the site of a WWII bomber crash site with some pieces of the wreckage still littered throughout the woods. But rather than write a lengthy post with a few photos, I’ve decided to try a video series that I’m calling Adventures with Clara to highlight just how adventurous she is.   [map style=”width: auto;…

  • Oregon Butte: The Successful Failure

    View Oregon Butte – 5/26-27/2012 in a larger map Things don’t always go according to plan. Along the journey, you discover new interests or find obstacles that end up providing you with a totally different experience than originally expected. This lesson was hard hit this weekend as we attempted a backpacking trip in the Blue Mountains of southeastern Washington. The trip was a success, but certainly not what I had expected. It’s really a lesson in not getting enough information ahead of time. On paper, it looked like the perfect trip. It’s a 16-mile loop up Panjab Creek to the…