Mighty Clinton River (MCR) !!: A Good Fall Run

We had a good day for a nice Fall run on Sunday, October 27th with one of the larger groups to go down the MCR in a while. The crew consisted of myself, Dale, Ed, John B., Doug, Curt, Lori, Linda, Pete, Steve, Phil, Jerry, Rene, and Jarrett. The river level was showing 1.5 on the Auburn Gage but it seemed lower than that. It was a bit technical in a few spots where you had to watch it to avoid scraping some gravel. There were no portages between Avon & Livernois to Ryan, but there is still a limbo log tree across the river just after the 2nd Street stretch when you turn towards the picnic area and on to Rock Island. Well, we sort of did portage at Rock Island because the current was all going into a log pile on river right but the shore on river left was too shallow to paddle through. Since we were stopped for a break there I sort of forgot we dragged around that.

The colors were looking good and a lot of trees are losing leaves now, or making like trees and leaf. ;) It was a long trip though, we put on around 1:30pm and didn't get off the river until after 5:30 or 6pm. We did take a long stop at Rock Island and then again a Yates. Somewhere between those two spots Doug tried to avoid flipping and dislocated his shoulder! He got into Dale's boat for a ride down to Yates where his wife was waiting for him and we took his boat down and home with us after. Other than a quick call to hear he had gone to ER and they put his shoulder back in place we have not heard how he is doing but will check on that today.

The rest of us continued down to Ryan road. We put Jarrett's kayak inside Rene & Jerry's canoe then Jarrett paddled Doug's boat down. The weather was cool but nice for most of the trip with the better sun and temp's later into the trip.

Other than Doug's mishap it was a good day on the river!