Sometimes I just enjoy watching water

Rookie said:
"Water is wonderful and ever changing.

We’re drawn to it, which is no surprise since 60% of the human adult body is water.

We’re made of stardust and water."

Take stardust.
Add water.
Begat all sons and daughters.

Dehydrate.
Displace.
All life lost in space.

To reason,
a rippled rhyme,
we watch a flow keep time.

@canoeswithduckheads <3

@Rookie said:
@canoeswithduckheads <3

B)

I don’t know if many others do this but through out the year I visit a fairly remote boat landing on the Wisconsin River near where I live. I just like to pay a fifteen or twenty minute visit to the river even if I’m not paddling. I note the water levels and where willows are springing up or where they’ve been washed away by floods, where the ice collects and where the channels first show themselves in the spring melt. It changes with the years, This year I had an accident that has kept me off the water, but I as soon as I was ambulatory and could drive I resumed my visits. There are sandstone bluffs that can be seen from that landing and sometimes there is a song lyric (and I don’t even remember the rest of the song) that springs unbidden to mind. “Solid rock is just sand and water, sand and water, and a million years gone by.” And so it is.

The first time I paddled the Current River down in Mo, as we were all departing from our first rendezvous down there, TheBob took me aside after camp was broken and everything loaded up for the road. A few of us just went down to the shore and quietly watched the river flow for a few minutes more before hitting the road. You know, that virtually guarantees that there will be a return trip. Its not a bad habit to get into on any river, though often there seems an urgency to get going that isn’t really all that urgent. I’d recommend such a delay to anyone.

@string said:

Those are Castoff’s toes. That’s why real paddlers wear water shoes. :smiley:

It’s something of a ritual at a family gathering that happens around this time to soak you feet (and sometime more) in the headwaters of the River Jordan. I guarantee you that it will cool your toes. Temps are in the upper 40s year round.

Where is this? Surely not THE River Jordan?

River Jordan in northern lower Michigan?

So…this is whats called a …Troll Stream? I know you have troll bridges. HMMM

Willowleaf has it.

The beautiful Jordan River is the first river to be designated into the State of Michigan’s Natural Rivers Act in 1972. About 25 miles long, it empties into the south arm of Lake Charlevoix. As rival51 noted, the water is always cold. Good trout, steelhead and salmon fishing.

A lovely river to paddle.

@roym. Only one “troll” bridge here and that’s Big Mac (a/k/a Mackinac Bridge). We trolls live below the bridge. :slight_smile:
The Yoopers live above it, on the other side of the straits.

:slight_smile:

Yep, although we consider it THE River Jordan although not the biblical one. Wife’s father is from a farm now just above the federal hatchery that uses the COLD spring water for the trout and salmon. The family still has 120 acres there. That valley is about a good a place as you might hope to find. The paddling water is much farther down stream.

I liked to go camping and hiking up along the Jordan during my years in Michigan (1996-2003). It is a pretty area and was the only part of the state that reminded me of the Allegheny Mountains, hills and valleys of Western PA that I was often homesick for.

It was mainly the lakeshores and beaches that compensated for the scarily flat land of Michigan during my occupational exile there. And I must admit it was MUCH easier to bike in the Big Mitten.

Funny but some of my Michigan relatives have been freaked out by the steep hills and precipitous valleys of Pittsburgh when they visited, just as I have always been freaked by how flat their state is. I guess we all have a sort of geographic terrain baseline. But then we lived near Ann Arbor until I was 5 so it couldn’t be early childhood patterning.

@willowleaf I don’t know about the terrain baseline. I was born & raised in Western Pennsylvania but have mostly been in Mid-Michigan since I headed for MSU in '68. Took up enjoying the rivers & forests of Northern Michigan. I do enjoy getting back to Penna. every so often though.

I do remember scaring the heck out of some flat land friends in my college years. Took them over the mountain from Youngstown to Ligonier on Old Rt. 30. I (probably) was showing off & driving way faster than I should have but… it was fun.

@willowleaf said:
…Michigan … freaked by how flat their state is

you haven’t visited a ‘flat state’ until you’ve visited the ‘sandspit state’, er I mean sunshine.
The largest (and just about only) ‘rapids’ on a river we have is ‘The Shoals’ on the Suwannee. Some call it a class III, hmm, I suppose at certain water levels.
But, there is a LOT of water to enjoy watching all year round down here.

You haven’t been to the falls of the Steinhatchie? A very short drop over a limestone shelf.

@raisins said:

@willowleaf said:
…Michigan … freaked by how flat their state is

you haven’t visited a ‘flat state’ until you’ve visited the ‘sandspit state’, er I mean sunshine.
The largest (and just about only) ‘rapids’ on a river we have is ‘The Shoals’ on the Suwannee. Some call it a class III, hmm, I suppose at certain water levels.
But, there is a LOT of water to enjoy watching all year round down here.

I discovered how flat in a strange way, after having driven from CO to FL for a symposium and other snowbirding escape time. Total time away from home was about 5 weeks. When I returned home and went for our usual walks, my Achilles tendons felt like they had tightened up from never having climbed any hills or even stairs on that trip. I mean, not even one dinky incline. It took several walks on our steep home turf before my legs began to feel normal again.

@string said:
You haven’t been to the falls of the Steinhatchie? A very short drop over a limestone shelf.

Last time I paddled there the falls were “drowned”. Water was up.

Limestone shelf is what forms the “Big Shoals SP” rapids. There are several throughout the west Fla.

Sometimes the critters just want to look at the water too.

https://youtu.be/rbE53XUtVw0

My brother recommended we stop by Steinhatchie on our way to Nokomis once.
The total runnable river was 5 miles, maybe. The motel room had a sign that said " Don’t clean fish in the sink". My wife was not impressed.
It did have a very good seafood restaurant.