Our Kayaking Trip

Sunday was our long-awaited kayaking day. Pete and I have been planning a trip down the Farmington River for a few weeks now. On Saturday, we planned our route. We wanted to kayak the part of the river that was a little more low-key vs. the upper part of the river (which has some rapids). We decided to put-in in Farmington (off of Rt. 4 -- Wannowmasa Lane). We wanted to take out at "The Tree" on 185 (it's the largest tree in CT). Our route (including a lunch break) was going to take us 8 hours and was a hair under 13 miles.

We rented our kayaks from Main Stream Canoes and Kayaks in New Hartford. Geesh, were they expensive to rent! ($45 apiece!!) We were there at 9:00 sharp to pick them up. They had to be back no later than 6:00.

The beginning of our trip was OK. We got the kayaks into the water with no trouble. About 0.1 tenth of a mile into the trip, the river became extremely wide and had some really weird currents. The kayaks we rented were much bigger than the ones I was used to (Pete and I have both been kayaking in New Hampshire on several occasions). I could not steer my kayak for the life of me! I was going around in circles and could not aim it where I wanted to go (which was downstream). After about a half hour of figuring out how to work the things (they had rudders too which we decided, after a few painful minutes, that we weren't going to use), we were off. A little further down the river (about a mile or so), Pete saw some water to the left of us. Oh boy, that was bad. I remembered seeing in my book, "The Farmington River Guide," that the Pequabuck River started from the Farmington (on the right hand side), and and I, for about 10 painful minutes, thought we were now going down the Pequabuck toward Bristol!! Upon realizing that we were still on the Farmington, we proceeded. (I had stopped to look at my Guide and realized that we were OK.) After we passed the REAL Pequabuck, we were aware that we were coming up to an old dam. We had to stay to the left of the river as to get out and find a portage path. We could NOT go over the dam with our kayaks!! It was a small, broken down dam, but, nonetheless, it was a dam. We found the path and dragged both kayaks up, around, and then down the side of the dam (on land of course). We then continued on our merry way with no other incidents!

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. There was a lot of paddling for us to do but there were also some times that we could stop paddling and just let the current take us. We were on the river for a LONG time but we enjoyed ourselves.

After we crossed under Route 44, Pete got out to swim. I had planned on it but decided against it. I didn't want to sit in a wet, silt filled bathing suit for another 3.3 miles. We were going to go for a swim when we reached the pull-out at "The Tree" but decided against it when we got there. The place was jammed with screaming kids, people who didn't speak English, and a car booming Latin music in the parking lot. We were absolutely beat and we didn't want to deal with all of that.

We had left Pete's car in the parking lot at 8:00 that morning. After we pulled the kayaks out, he took the car to go get the truck, thus leaving me with the kayaks. It took him about 40 minutes to drive to our put-in spot, get the truck, and come back to me. After sitting there, on top of the kayaks for that amount of time listening to booming Latin music, I was so glad when Pete returned with the truck. It took the rest of our energy to lift both of our kayaks up to put in the bed of the truck. After tying them down (they stuck out of the bed quite a bit), we were off -- headed back to Main Stream to return the kayaks.

Once the kayaks were returned, we quickly stopped home so Pete could put on dry sneakers. We then took the truck to Farmington to pick up the car. When all was said and done, we were home at about 6:45. What a long, yet very enjoyable day!

Next time we go kayaking, we are going to go up river, perhaps starting in Barkhamsted. We want some of the wilder water that the Farmington offers. We're also going to look into possibly purchasing some used kayaks -- $100 rental each time we go is a bit much!

I'll post some pictures after we finish off the camera (disposable) and get the pictures put on CD.