Eric, myself, and our friends Michelle & Kelly started on a journey down the Altamaha River in South Ga last June. Our
first trip down the river we paddled 40 miles in two days. Our
second trip down the river was only 28 miles in two days. THIS trip however was 54 miles in two days.
We started our trip this past Friday. We strapped the boats onto the cars and started driving south to Jesup, GA. We arrived before 10pm and decided to sleep in our cars instead of getting out the tents. In the morning Eric and Michelle shuttled one car to our end destination and came back with the other. After getting all the boats situated we were on the river by 8:30am leaving Jaycee's Landing.
At the beginning part of this trip we saw many man made things along the river. A paper plant (that smelled very bad) and a railroad bridge were interesting to paddle by. While going under the bridge a train went over us and I have to say, it was a little freaky being under something SOOO heavy.
After the bridge we didn't see much signs of civilization other than a few fisherman for the rest of the day. We did however see some wild life. Lots of birds, fish and...alligators! The first gator we saw was dead along the shore. I was glad it wasn't alive but I was a little concerned on it's size. We are guessing it was 7 feet long from snout to tail (picture coming soon). Seeing something THAT big was kind of freaky!
After the dead gator, we did see a few other little ones in the water. They never bothered us and we stayed as far away as possible!
At some point during the day we had a little butterfly
hang on the canoe. First it was on the front of the boat just hanging out. Then it decided it liked my hat. I think the butterfly was on there for at least 30 min if not longer. I thought it was pretty cool. It must have been on vacation as well.
At about 4:00 we picked a beach to claim as our home for the night. We were not quite sure but we thought we did about 24-26 miles of paddling that day. We set up our tents, got a fire going and cooked our dinner. Michelle & Kelly brought us some beef, pepper and onion kabobs for dinner. They were delicious! Of course, we also had some S'mores. We sat by the fire for a while before we headed to bed (before 10pm). It had been a long day and we were tired!
We got up the next morning, tore down the tents, packed up and got back on the river by 8:00am. Unfortunately, shortly after starting down the river we discovered that we had only gone 19 miles the day before. It is so hard to gauge where you think you are on the river. Sometimes we have mile markers, and sometimes we don't. So... we needed to go a lot farther on day 2. We decided we should go about 25 miles. That way we would only have 10 left for day 3.
At about 1:30 in the afternoon on day 3 we stopped at a big landing called Altamaha Fish Camp. They had a little convenience store where we bought some ice, drinks and ICE CREAM! This was a nice treat after paddling 37 miles so far. At this point we needed to go another 7 miles, give or take. We started again down the river at about 2:30. At about 4:00 we got to a point where we figured we could stop once we found a camp site. Every place where we thought we would find a nice beach was covered by weeds and grass. The farther we went the more we realized that we would not be finding a place to camp that night. So the decision was made that we HAD to paddle all the way to our final destination; Two Way Fish Camp in Darien, GA. This would mean a total of 35 miles in one day. It was a HARD afternoon.
At one point we realized that we were no
longer paddling
with the current. Apparently the tide was coming in and we hand to paddle against it for about 4 hours. Who knew the tide would affect the river 20 miles up stream so much!?!
Like I said, the afternoon/evening of paddling was HARD but we had some amazing views on the river. We saw a lot of beautiful Cypress trees covered in Spanish moss. It was so beautiful...I just wish I could have stopped to enjoy how pretty it was. We
FINALLY arrived at Two Way around 8:40pm. It was a HUGE relief to be done.
The boys went off to get our car that we left at Jaycee's Landing while Michelle and I ate at Mudcat Charlie's. Yes, that's right folks...we ate at a place called Mudcat. I only ordered a grilled cheese sandwich but the rest of the menu did look very good. While at dinner Michelle & I worked on finding a hotel to stay at for the night. We ended up getting a room at the Fairfield Inn & Suites. I have to say, the bed in that room felt like Heaven. It was sooo comfortable. MUCH better than the ground I had been sleeping on the night before.
The next morning, Monday, we left the hotel and headed to Savannah for the day. We spent some time just hanging out by the river before catching lunch and heading back to Athens.
Even though we had some setbacks it was a great trip! We have completed 122 miles on the Altamaha river since last June. It really didn't take long but 122 miles is a lot! I am excited to say that I have paddled the whole Altamaha River. If you look at the
map you can see where we started and were we finished. I am very proud of what I have accomplished!
(Pictures from this post came from
Michelle's blog. Hopefully I will have some more from her hubby to share soon.)
I got some great and not so great pictures...but you can get an idea of what it was like! 
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
