Kayaking the Willamette
9/13/98
Trish and I took out our Coleman 17' canoe and joined
Dad in the Aquaterra Chinook (yellow, 17') and David in the Aquaterra Kiwi
(blue, 8') for a day on the Willamette. We put in at Cathedral Park
under the St. Johns Bridge and paddled upstream towards Portland:
The river was surprisingly rough - several swells were big enough to make
me worry about capsizing. We came upon the wreck of an old ship,
which is near the railroad bridge pictured above. It has been there
for years. This time, we got to see one of the Portland fire boats
practicing putting out fires by spraying it with their massive water cannons.
David got a little too chose, and they told him to move away to avoid being
hit.
We continued up-river for quite a while, passing under the railroad bridge
and eventually stopping at a small beach next to a Coast Guard dock.
On the way back down, we stopped by the wreck that the fire-boat had been
spraying before. We got up really close to it! In the pictures,
you can see the huge nails that used to hold the deck on. The deck
has long since rotted away, but the nails remain.
When we got back to Cathedral Park, we saw a group putting a boat in that
was going to be taking river bottom samples. The trip was a great
success, and we were pretty tired by the time we got back.
