2004-07-25 Zumbro River Topless Wildlife sighting

My first canoe trip of the day was from Bluff Valley Campground to Zumbro Falls canoe rental with Norm Carlson.  We used my vintage Alumacraft canoe (also known as the GeezerBeater from this year’s Mora Canoe Race).   Norm had not been paddling for many years.  He weighed a significant amount more than me so we filled a 6 mil thick plastic “contractor” garbage bag with sand at the landing and put it next to me in the back for ballast.  We started off going upstream just because I wanted to see how hard it was when the water was low.  It wasn’t hard, but we turned back downstream before we cleared the campgrounds because Doreene would be waiting to pick us up in Zumbro Falls.

An osprey flew around the bend.  A 10 inch diameter softshelled mud turtle turned warily to watch us pass.  We chased a pair of big blue herons downstream.  Norm wanted to explore the channel entering from Cold Water Creek and we paddled up that for a short way before spinning back around.  It was colder water than the Zumbro.  We passed a wooden flight of stairs that had been washed downstream by the spring floodwaters.  Norm said the guy wanted someone to drag it back upstream for him, but no one had done it yet.  Sounds like a challenge worth attempting if I could get someone else to help.

The sunshine was warming up the river from the cool morning earlier.  As we passed through the town of Zumbro Falls, we heard a minister preaching over a loud speaker.  A huge pile of logs was wrapped around the concrete bridge pylon.  Flocks of swallows darted between each other in a swarm up above, their mud nests all in a neat row high above us underneath the bridge.  It wasn’t long after that we came to our take out at the canoe rental place in Zumbro Falls.  Norm and I both enjoyed our leisurely paddle on a summer morning.

Shortly after lunch the same day, Doreene and I paddled from Bluff Valley Campground to Hammond with Jim and Margaret Ertes and their son, Matt, and his girlfriend, Sarah.  Matt and Sarah brought their fishing poles and tried fishing with worms and bobbers.  We used 2 aluminum canoes and a green Mad River canoe.   

Jim had raced canoes in Iowa many years ago and I could tell that he definitely knew how to handle a paddle, even though he had never used a bent shaft paddle.  I told him about my idea of having a spectator friendly canoe race with different kinds of events.  He suggested that I have a gunnel standing race.  He also said that they had gotten 17 people in a single canoe back when he was in college.  They way he described it, it was kind of a balancing act with people hiked out over the sides.

A turkey buzzard spiraled over us.  Songbirds serenaded us from the trees.  We passed several loud flotillas of inebriated innertubers.  One such group sported some topless young women, much to the delight of nearby groups of other tubers.  I’ll be canoeing this river more often now that I know about the potential for wildlife sightings.

When we stopped at a sandbar, he unloaded his aluminum canoe and showed me how he could paddle while standing on the gunnels.  It was only a couple of paddles before he fell off backwards into the cool river.   Later on, with Doreene in the front of my canoe, I tried the same stunt briefly and Doreene didn’t know I was standing on the gunnels until after I had sat back down.  If she had, she said she would have tipped me over on purpose.  Jim was 61 and I was 48, but that didn’t stop us from being immature for the sake of good clean fun.  At one point, we were both paddling our wives backwards downstream and were catching up to some kayakers and a canoe that had passed us earlier.   I didn’t have the heart to pass them up that way though so I stopped before we caught them.

We had left my van at the town of Hammond.  It was only 7 miles or so by road and the river was relatively straight.  However, it took us 4 hours because we took several long fishing breaks and the Mad River canoe wasn’t built for paddling fast.  It was built for faster rivers than this.   A lot of the time, Jim and I pulled up in a shady spot along the shore to wait for Matt and Sarah to catch up.   They didn’t appear to be in a hurry.  When we finally got out, I had to scramble to rig up the two 2X4’s I had borrowed to allow me to tie all 3 canoes on top of my van. 

In spite of using sunscreen, we all had some sunburn.  It was a wonderfully hot summer day on the Zumbro River.