One Last Hurrah on the Muskegon

For real.

Hi gang.

So, it was exactly one week ago - to the day - that I had last canoed down the Muskegon River.  Since that day, Yours Truly has been busy with occupying himself with the setting up of his classroom, buying last-minute, Back to School crap for myself and the girls, and otherwise preparing mentally for the impending doom of September 4th and Work.

Loading up at the Marion campground to shuttle over to the launching point.

My old high school buddy, Sean, had been trying to get a bunch of the old high school crew together for a canoeing adventure sometime in August, and while he was in the planning phase of everything, I expressed my interest in going.  Eventually, he settled on today, and, coincidentally chose the Muskegon River as the venue.  At the last second, the McNerney clan backed out, as did a couple others, so in the end it was only Sean and I, his girlfriend and daughter, his sister and her husband, and their four kids.

Unlike the last time I went canoeing on the Muskegon, this wasn't going to be some two-hour in-and-out.  No, with Sean planning it, it was destined to be a grand adventure of epic proportions.  FOUR HOURS of canoeing, with multiple hour-long stops for swimming and hanging out. 

We were on the river for seven hours, all the while thunderstorms threatened to drown us in a fury and I fought off an excruciating headache for the last two hours of it. 

But it was still a hell of a lot of fun.

Check it out. . .

Passing under the first bridge on the river, filled with graffiti from the '70s and '80s, by the looks of things.

A bit dreary out, we were expecting rain and brought ponchos and rain jackets, just in case.

I ended up in the back of a canoe with Sean's girlfriend, Sara.

Sean and his daughter, Grace.

Like I had seen in the Muskegon River last week (remember?), there were a heck of a lot of trees falling into the river.  I assume because the water level is low and the exposed tree roots lose their grip or something after drying out.  I don't know, I have no idea how trees work.

We ran into a large group of rowdy drunks along this dune cliff thing, fortunately the river was wide enough so they couldn't splash us. . . which is, like, the universal thing drunk people do when they stop canoeing and see other folks pass by.

Making a pit stop.

We decided to pull our canoes over to the small beach, at center.  We had been on the river for about an hour at this point and some folks wanted to take a break and swim for a bit.

This ended up being our longest stop of the trip - we were here for over an hour.

Sean, keeping it classy as always.

Back on the river. . .

We beamed my Classic Rock playlist off my phone to Sean's Bluetooth Speaker, once his phone died, which worked really well for the remainder of the trip

Pulling alongside for a snack break.

We came across quite a few patches of super thick fog throughout the afternoon, like this.

 

More fog.

About three hours in, the sun came out.  The forecast had been something ridiculous like 80% thunderstorms, but we hadn't seen a single drop of rain up to this point.  The sun was welcome, indeed.

Taking another break to stop and let kids roll down a sandy hill.

Trouble brewing. . .

Sean supervises the rope swing.

 

After another half-hour of canoeing, we stopped for a bathroom break at this little tributary stream. . .

After about four and half hours on the river, folks began to get tired of canoeing.  Sara was spent, so I ended up canoeing us the rest of the way.  My head was POUNDING at this point, too, and the skies continued to grow darker and darker.  We were all running out of gas.

 

This dude has a ridiculous amount of street signs in his backyard.  How has no one reported him yet?  Hundreds and thousands of people must canoe past his house every summer. . .

At long last, we finally arrived back at the campground.  After stowing our canoes with the camp people, I said my goodbyes and set off back for Midland.  It was only on my drive back home that it started to rain, we had been incredibly fortunate this afternoon.  Still, next time we all decide to do a High School group canoe outing, I'm going to seriously lobby for a shortened amount of time.

- Brian