Riding the Rapids! (Actually, canoeing Bear Creek)

Well, I can say now that I survived the canoe trip down Bear Creek last Saturday (November 7th)!

This pic is the one I took so investigators would see it on my photo cloud and know our “last known location” if we went missing.

“Oh, ye, of little faith!” My sweetie was saying, but fresh in my mind was that canoe trip on the Illinois River in Oklahoma on a senior skip day…I think I was actually a junior (supporting the upperclassmen, I’m sure) which was quite a few years ago…

On that canoe trip, I can remember that none of us had much actual canoe-operating knowledge, and the main thing when we flipped the canoe (that happened more than once, I recall) was to SAVE THE COOLER!!

Which, since we all underage, was, I’m sure filled with chicken salad sandwiches we didn’t wanna lose before the parent- organized picnic at the end of the day…

Honestly, where were the parents? I wonder if they even knew where we were!

So this was a nice relaxing canoe trip, compared to that one last experience! The colors along the Creek were prime! I had no idea that the cypress trees turned this gorgeous orange!

For readers not familiar with Bear Creek, it’s a tributary of the Tennessee River, in the northeast Mississippi/northwest Alabama region. Sometimes it’s just a creek – I have done photo shoots with senior girls in a chair in the creek!

But I’ve also seen it 10-15 feet higher than that- enough to rip out a wooden creekside wedding arbor!

It flows north into the Tennessee- north-flowing American rivers are always odd to me… it’s larger toward the River, since the Tennessee was dammed to form Pickwick Lake.

The second week of November it was just high enough for us to not ever get stuck and have to push out, it’s supposedly better when it’s a bit higher and you don’t have to row much, just steer! We put in at the Dennis Bridge and got out at Tishomingo State Park’s canoe landing area. All pretty easy.

Also a plus in November- no snakes! We saw a lot of squirrels, and heard some deer run off.

The end of the story: we never even came close to tipping over! I never got wet- just muddy shoes, because guess who has to jump out at the landing point and pull it ashore a bit??!!

Mission accomplished!