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Trip
Report for Wabash River
Saturday, August 5 to Sunday, August 6, 2000
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Four
of us had planned on putting our canoe and kayaks in at the Rich Valley
public access site between Wabash and Peru. As it turned out, we happened
upon Omer Cole P.A.P., which is a little bit downstream from Rich Valley.
This access site wasn't even labeled on our map, but it's a nice one. |
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We
did successfully meet up with a fifth friend who put his kayak in at the
Peru access point by the power plant. The water was abnormally high for
July, which made for some nice paddling. It was about 1200 cfs at Peru on
Saturday and around 850 cfs at Peru on Sunday. (It would normally be around
250 cfs.) |
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The river was wide and you
couldn't really determine where a channel was. Luckily, it was high enough
that you could paddle anywhere in the river without getting hung up in
a shallow area. I spoke with a person who has paddled this stretch many
times. He stated that there is almost always a small 2-3 foot channel
that you can paddle down, but the river remains wide even at lower levels.
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There are several road and
railroad bridges along this stretch of the river, and some are neat old
ones. You can really see a lot of undercutting on those.
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Considering
the predictions for rain, we lucked out with the weather this weekend. It
was comfortable paddling weather (high 70s to mid 80s), and partly cloudy.
We only had a couple of short-lived rain showers, which were actually kind
of refreshing. |
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There
was generally pretty good flow on the river. We even had a few spots with
small standing waves. Sometimes, when the wind kicked up, you couldn't stop
paddling for a minute or the wind would spin you around and send you back
upstream. Some people may not like that, but we enjoyed the challenge. |
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We
took out at Logansport, which made our total trip about 18 or so miles.
We saw lots of heron, jumping fish (one almost landed in our friends' canoe),
kingfishers, an opossum and vultures. There was a thin veneer of trees along
the river, making for some pretty scenery. We all enjoyed ourselves, though
we wouldn't have minded some more riffles. We all rated the trip at 3 to
3 1/2 paddles out of 5. |
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