Day 30 September 14, 2009 Runable, or Unrunable? That is the question

Day 30/ 9-14-09
This morning seemed a bit darker as we arose at 6:30am to start another great day of paddling. We strolled off in great spirits because we knew we had some awesome rapids ahead of us, (run able or not), and also we got to choose if we wanted to run bow or stern, and some chose their own partners also. This made the group comfortable with their paddling, and personally I felt like I could take on any rapid that came before me, and my partner. As we paddled the first seven miles before our first portage, we passed under a bridge. We heard some horn honks on top of that bridge, and as we looked up we saw a truck waving down at us. This was another small experience that there was civilization outside of our ECOEE 2009 world. We came up to “Two Portage Falls,” our first destination. Matt (our L.O.D.) let a couple of people scout the rapid out first before he made a decision on either running it, or portaging our gear and canoes. The rapid was intense, and was much too big to run with canoes, so we portaged our things down to the beach at the bottom of the rapid. As more and more of us got there we noticed Jeff off in the distance on the left bank of the rapid, lining down it. This got some of us to think that maybe we should have lined the rapid, but what’s done was done. On the beach Matt had us eat a nice lunch and then we were off to canoe forth to our next rapid called, “Pond Falls.” The whole process or the day was to scout the rapids, see if they were run able, and then make our decision to portage around it, run it, or portage our gear and run with empty canoes. The first part of Pond Falls was not run able so we portaged around it again. As we got back on the water there was a pleasant stretch of water before the third rapid. On this stretch of water we encountered our biggest natural wildlife that came across our vicinity yet. We had seen a black bear cub walking along the river bank going from bush to bush looking for berries. We were awed and amazed by the gentle sight of this bear, because for some of us this was the first time we had seen a bear in its natural habitat. After the awesome site we traveled to Devil Shoepack Rapids, where we had about a mile stretch of rapids to rage on. Matt took is up to the portage on a cliff where we scouted out our best route to go. We ran the rapid one by one with only one boat getting stuck on rocks. Our camp came soon following, and we all got much needed food. Today was well planned, ran smoothly, and the black bear took the icing on the cake.
Jake