May 7th Journal Entry

As I turned in last night I went out again to the boat dock. I untied and moved the canoes under the dining area overhang that shelters the boat fueling pumps. I tied up again as the storm broke. Only one boat will fill with water this way. I was damp going to bed but most of my equipment stayed dry.
At 4am I crawled out of bed and started putting everything in the tent under the overhang. I had promised  the cashier that I would be on my way by 6am. I took down my tent and folded it under the same protection. The rain kept falling until 8am.
I untied the boats and dragged them up onto the shore so I could bail them out. A gentleman named John Hodd came under the awning to fish and I mentioned that I would be giving these boats away to children after I learned to said on Claytor Lake. Donnie Turner had told me that I could not make it across the next set of rapids with them.
John offered to buy them for his 16 year old, but I insisted on giving them away. We compromised with him buying me a sandwich and coffee for breakfast. I will call him in about a week and he will come to get the boats at Claytor Lake State Park. He helped me launch and continued fishing as I paddled away under the bridge.
Passed a few osprey which I did not know lived in this area and a set of people fishing beside a van. i tried to stay on the right hand side of the river as it had looked the shortest way on my map. At lunchtime, the sun had come out and I entered a cove fed by two very slow moving creeks. I tied off and sat on the bank eating two handfuls of corn chips. I talked briefly to two ladies in their bass boat who had entered the cove to fish. They told me that the State Park was still four miles ahead.
The wind came up, pushing me away from the right bank. As I struggled to get closer, i noticed that the debris on the water was actually moving upstream. A return current had started because of the recent flood waters entering the lake. I was fighting against wind and current.
So i let the wind push me away from the bank and out of the current. Using the kayak paddle I stroked mightily. The action made drips fall inside the center hull and I bailed once each hour with my trusty, oatmeal cooking,  corn can. Flattened at the lip it makes a good bailer.
Unfortunately, whenever I stopped to bail the reverse current, now forty feet wide, took me upstream, not far but enough to show I was still meeting resistance. I moved back against the shoreline and tried to stay sheltered by boat docks, ramps and rock ledges as I paddled downstream.
At last, my shoulder cried, "that's enough." I happened to be between two yard in an area that appeared to be forest and untended. I pulled in and set the stern of the boat up on a few small floating logs. They sank under the weight to the bottom and gave me a stepping platform to unload my equipment.
I set up camp on a road bed that had grown up with vegetation. My bedding was wet from the water I had dripped into the boats while paddling and from the wakes of passing motor boats. These wakes had rocked me all day. It was early  so I hung my bedding on trees to dry and tied the boats so they faced into the river. I hoped all the wake waves would pass under the bows and that the logs under the stern would dampen the slap of the waves on shore.
I went to bed while the sun was setting, reading "Cold Fire" by Dean Koontz. As I lay there the earth beneath my back kept rocking as the boats had done that day.  Good night, daddy.