a life more awesome: Saco River Trip: Day 2

Sunday, Matt and Al got up first and started fussing around with the fire. I decided to stop pretending I was going to go back to sleep and got out of my tent at 7:30. Everyone else emerged at pretty much the same time. We were ugly and cold, and the bugs had woken up before us.

Fart tent

Matt went to work trying to make a sand oven to heat water for oatmeal and coffee. I got to work drinking a root beer and eating dry pop tarts. He eventually gave up, and within a half hour or so, we started taking everything down. We wanted to hit the river early.

Tundra morning

Rich was the unlucky one of the trip- he had to take care of business and couldn't wait. So, off he went into the woods with toilet paper and dread. He returned shortly after, out of his mind from the amount of bugs that attacked him. He said it was unequivocally the worst experience of his life, swatting 5 bugs at a time and pulling his hand up to reveal blood all over it. Gotta love those Saco River woods!!

poor guy

We hit the river just after 9 (the earliest I've ever started). It was still cold, and none of us felt particularly good, but we had current and time on our side- this would be a relaxing morning. I've always loved the start of the second day. The river is always more interesting and faster, and there's less distance to cover. I didn't know this the night before, but we had camped on a sandbar I knew- one of the ones my Dad and I used to stop on all the time to swim. We had camped much farther down the river than I thought. After looking at a map, it looked like we only had about 3 miles to go before hitting the 1pm shorter trip bridge. We had somehow done 14 miles the day before. Knowing that we had 6 hours to travel 8 miles, we pretty much all decided the long trip was in order.

After about 20 minutes, Rich and I were somehow in the lead, and we came pretty close to a stick that was only sticking up a few inches out of the water. A lot of times, these sticks will just scrape the bottom of the boat and give you a good scare, but that's it. We looked back and saw that Al and Matt were right next to Josh and Jesse, doing something. If I remember correctly, Rich had shouted to be careful when we passed the stick. He now whispered that it looked like they were going to hit it.

I've missed a lot of opportunities in my life, but this one hurt. My camera was right in my hand. I thought to myself, "what a picture it would be if I caught them tipping their canoe," but then thought "they won't. they'll be fine" and didn't turn the camera on. I heard Rich say "yes.... hit it.... yesss....." and sure enough, they did. I turned to see Al, fully laid out, both legs straight out in the air, arms flailing, out of control and nearly sideways with terror. Matt looked more calm, but was also had that surefire look of panic. The canoe was nearly completely sideways, with water immediately starting to gush in by the gallon. Josh was a hero that day, holding their canoe just enough so that Al balanced out and they saved it. But they couldn't have been much closer to completely tipping the canoe and sending themselves and all their stuff into the frigid 54 degree water. I lie awake at night sometimes, cursing myself for not having the camera ready. I can still see Al flailing about perfectly in my mind, but to actually have that picture... damn. I will NEVER not be ready with the camera in a situation like this ever again. Especially with Rich willing the accident from behind. So close.

Right after: Josh and Jesse concerned, Al freaking out, Matt doing the embarrassed "I suck!" laugh and waive

We pulled over to the first sandbar and cleaned out and flipped the canoe. Good stuff. Proud it wasn't me.

There was a big crew we passed, and then they passed us, and we passed them again. We kept seeing them, and I don't understand why they kept trying to catch up and pass us. This happens a lot. A group will be dead in the water, just sitting there, barely moving and drinking beers. A faster group (us) will come through and speed up to pass them as quickly as possible to eventually return to our pace. Then, the stupid slow group will kick in and start paddling faster. This always happens, and I'll never understand it. Just because someone is passing you, you have to speed up and make it harder? Do you really like paddling right next to complete strangers? Wouldn't you want to just relax at your pace and have them pass you?

One canoe in that group was a guy in the back, paddling and steering, while his girlfriend lay in the front of the canoe, just like, staring at him. She didn't even have a paddle. Really? The best guy though, was sitting in a canoe by himself on the side of the river, looking dead. When Matt and Al passed him, we heard "SAAAAP." (what's up). Then Josh and Jesse passed him. "SAAAAP." When Rich and I passed him, we saw what we were dealing with. This was a fat, piggish looking, hobbit-like man, sitting in a canoe going nowhere, his end deep in the water, the other high in the air. He had a kayak paddle, and the entire front of his canoe was just a giant trash bag. He sat there alone, looking stupid and confused, chugging a huge thing of milk. "SAAAAP." This guy definitely belonged with us. Later, when he passed us while we rested on a sandbar, and I was giving Jesse crap for eating healthy soup, he chimed in out of nowhere about how the Saco River didn't exist for health food and boy did he love some corned beef hash. Classic jugamo.

We tried to stop and relax even more, if only to kill some time, but got hit with a wall of mosquitoes that sent us panicking back to the canoes. It kind of sucked. This is the same thing that happened to my Dad and me the last time we went. The good of it though, was that we were basically forced into a dead pace of barely paddling and literally just floating down the river to kill time. My kind of canoeing.

We passed Walker's Bridge (where I usually get out) and continued on. This was only the second time in however many years I've been on this river that I went past this point.

The sun came out, and it turned into a gorgeous day.

Rich became an instigator, and some splashing began. I won't lie, getting some ice cold water splashed on you was a nice feeling in comparison to the hot sun. But most of the water I got splashed on me was from Rich, directly behind me. Nice aim, pal.

Jesse splashing as we pass some people moving even slower than us at our slowest pace.

We got to hit up some raging rapids at one point. The guy at Saco Bound said something along the lines of "there's some rough water, you'll get worried, then you'll hit it and it will be over in like 8 seconds. Don't worry about it." And he was right. We worried and prepared for awhile, as the sound of the rapids hit us much sooner than the sight. They looked more serious than he made them out to be, but once we hit them (Rich and I first, somehow), there was really only like 2 rocks to avoid and it was over instantly. It was still neat to have to worry about it though.

The rest of the river flew by, and we came to a giant right hand turn that sent us upstream to our takeout point at Lovewell Pond. Paddling against the current (re: actually having to paddle for a half mile without stopping) sucked, but it was beautiful. The whole river only showed small glimpses of fall- just some sporadic color here and there. But on our way to Lovewell Pond, it was super fall. And it was understandably quite beautiful.

One of my favorite pictures from the trip- Jesse and Josh just about at the Pond:

And here's a bigger and wider shot right after, with more mountains:

(weird that my phone takes much better pictures than my camera)

I'd never been to this pond before, and it was really nice. It was weird to go from a river for 2 days to being in a big body of water, and I definitely felt an unreasonable fear that now that we were in deeper and more open water, we were suddenly going to tip. Here's an insanely blue picture from Rich's camera:

And lastly, another favorite of Al and Matt in a maze of water and clouds. We couldn't have possibly had a nicer day- the weather was absolutely perfect.

We got to the beach 2 hours early, but luckily the mosquitoes weren't as bad here as they were on the sandbars. At least for awhile. And at least for all of us but Jesse. When the Saco Bound guy came to get the canoes, Jesse left with Al and Rich (the ones with cars) just to escape the mosquitoes. All of a sudden, Josh, Matt and I were swarmed. Somehow, literally every mosquito had been on Jesse.

This was a nice spot though- we set up chairs, got out some snacks, and just chilled. Rich and I felt dirty and disgusting and very bothered that we had been on water this long with nobody swimming. The Saco is always freezing, but I think the only time I haven't swam was when my Dad and I went in October. This pond was just enough of a jump up in temperature that we decided we had to go for it, and jumped in the muddy and freezing water. It was glorious- soooo refreshing and cleansing. It was absolutely the right way to end the trip.

The Saco Bound guy came an hour early, and talked like he was just picked up off the river out of a pile of drunk frat boys. But he was nice, and we were pretty psyched to get out early. Matt, Josh and I decided to throw the B while we waited for Rich and Al to return in their cars. The mosquitoes came out in full force, and then, apparently a death metal show let out down the river. Out of nowhere, like 6 canoes came out, and everybody in them was a metalhead. Everyone had a black shirt with an indecipherable metal band name on it, they all had absurdly long hair, and some were awkwardly lanky in only the way a death metal guitarist can be. There were at least 6 of them that I would 100% believe were the new guitarist for Cannibal Corpse or the long lost brother of Rake Yohn. I have never seen anyone look like this on the river, and suddenly there was a convention of them. Crazy.

Matt, waiting for the B while 8 Rake Yohns yell and hate mustard

We then went to the stupid Pizza Barn in Conway- a trip that Jesse had been engineering to happen for the entire trip. The food was much better than the last time I had been there though, so I'll take back some of the large amounts of shit-talking I've given the Pizza Barn in the past. And for a small pizza to cost like 18 bucks or whatever it was, at least they put ridiculous amounts of topping (this is a bad thing too).

I think there's an entire green pepper and 2 sticks of pepperoni on this

Jesse eating a weird taco pizza with a 1 pound bag of cheese on top, while Al is sound asleep at the table, mid meal

It was a great way to end the trip though. We hadn't really been able to take a break from canoeing to eat much more than chips or oatmeal creme pies (great call Rich), so some fresh pizza, a weird barn, and a jukebox (which Rich selected Freebird and Blaze of Glory from) hit the spot. We then parted ways and headed home for the awful part of camping- the unpacking and cleaning. We did it quick though, and I still somehow stayed up later than I should have. Sleeping the next day was absolutely fantastic, and I definitely felt sorry for the people who had to get up early and work the next day. I was stiff and exhausted, and the next day was what I commonly refer to as a "dead day."

It was a great trip, and I'm happy that I got to make the trip with these guys. Next summer?