September and October Paddles

For September we took a quick morning paddling on Simpson Lake.  It was a nice morning and we had a luncheon to attend just down the road.

We did see a guy on a paddleboard who was using it to exercise.  He was all over the place, moving quickly.  I like paddling because I can slow down and relax.

We had a big family trip planning for October.  A nice weekend paddling with friends and spending the night on the river.

The trouble with planning well in advance is that the weather is not always cooperative.  We've only had issues a couple of times because we like the mantra, "There's no such thing as bad weather, just bad equipment."

That may be true for the guys, but it gets a little different when taking the kids.  Thankfully the rain settled for the weekend, but the 5 inches of the rain the days prior put the river at level we needed to avoid.

I checked the river levels on what would have been our last morning on the water to find the river gauges at 2 to 3 times normal flow.  Guess it was a good thing we stayed back.

So what's a guy to do?  Find another place to paddle on a different weekend.  So, a week later we hit the lower Meramec for a nice morning paddle.

It was pretty foggy at the start, barely being able to see what was ahead.

 

 

The sun came out though and revealed some color leaves.

We came upon a boat dock and paddled around it a bit.  It was the first time I had seen storage seats on the top of a pontoon.