Low End of Season

Rainfall has been way below normal this year and I personally have not made many (if any) trips down the MCR since July!  When we did have water I was usually busy with something else or Up North riding my Polaris RZR 800 Electronic Fuel Injected High Output side by side 4x4!  (ok enough on that this is a "river" blog!) 

Clinton River Canoe and Kayak has been renting pretty steadily and as always doing a fine job manicuring the MCR.  They are talking about setting up some "haunted paddle trips" between now and Halloween, they close for the season after Halloween.  The tentative plan is for a short run between Utica and Heritage Park with some scary fun in between.  It will be a very short run but a lot of fun, check out my link to their site and contact them for info.

Dale and a few others have made a few runs over the past few months at low levels.  You can usually still get in a run from Yates to Ryan or Ryan to Van Dyke with a little scraping and grabbing here and there.  This next week or two between now (Oct. 14) and the end of the month should have some good color on the banks of the river.

I had the opportunity to join the "Friends of the Rouge River" group for a paddle on the Rouge river.  We put in near Wayne Michigan off Commerce Court (crosses Michigan Ave.)  behind some factories and paddled down to Venoy Road just North of Michigan Ave where there is a park with access to the river.  The Friends of the Rouge group has been working very hard for several months to get this section portage free.  This is a very easy section of river and according to a guy from Heavener's who was providing the rental boats for this trip, the river never gets any lower than what we paddled due to the discharge of water from the Ypsilanti Water Treatment Plant.  (btw, water from treatment plants is cleaner than the natural water draining into any river so don't let that scare you)  It took us 2 and a half hours to paddle this secton which is around 3+ miles by road.  There were a few tight spots but I never had to get out of my kayak.  We did scrape in a few spots but scooched past them.  The colors were nice, Fall paddling is one of my favorite times on the river.  We saw 3 deer cross the river but not much other wildlife, it was sprinkling most of the trip.  At the end just after we took out in the park where you see an old iron seawall that is all broken and leaning into the river, it started pouring rain as we took the boats out and got loaded up.  Dale and I found a quarter car wash to pull into and change into our dry clothes in a "shelter"!  We stopped at a bar on Wayne Rd. North of Ford Rd and had a decent burger and beer, then headed home.  I would probably not go out of my way to paddle this section of the Rouge again, but that is because I have the Clinton so close to home that it would only be for a special occasion like it was for this trip or if we were to try a different section like maybe through the industrial area and all the way to the Detroit river.

Here are a few pictures from the Rouge river trip.

Putting in off off 3600 Commerce Ct. in Wayne MI (you can get there with your GPS)

They are taking out an old dam here.  After this point the water got pretty cloudy but before that the river was pretty clear.

As you can see, they have some of the same issues we have on the MCR but they are working on it.

A few shots of Dale on the river.  He is paddling with the guy from Heavener's in the last one.

Some people were inspired to try the theraputic waters of the Rouge!  They said the water tasted funny!


I think I mentioned earlier this year that I had a crack in my Pyranha Burn.  I ended up getting some epoxy from Northwest River Supply made by West Marine that is made to repair plastic.  I also melted some plastic into the crack before applying the epoxy on the bottom and inside the kayak.  I still have to put the seat and pillar back into the boat so I am hoping it will work good.  Good thing to keep in mind for repairs though, stuff seems like it is going to stick well.

My river trip outlook looks low for this Fall.  I may be running it Oct. 20th to take out a Boy Scout trying to get his merit badge and join him along with the badge counselor, unless I end up going Up North!  From now until Thanksgiving I pretty much have other plans most weekends and it is too hard to get in a trip after work now since it gets dark early.  I may try to make one of the Halloween runs thoush, we'll see.

Maybe we'll see you on the river!