The water was low, as it is all along the river during this drought, but still we found deep-enough water that allowed me to swim about 5 miles. The rest of the time I was in the water on my flotation device, kicking like crazy and enjoying a lovely fresh and strong current. I always expected to be "going with the flow" in the river's current, but in fact we have had very little of that kind of experience. Until today! It was great fun and I had time to do some river botany along the way. We saw butternut trees laden with their oblong fruit, some button bush groves, bladder nut trees, Paw Paw trees and Joe Pye Weed to name just a few. The two main birds sighted very often were the Great Blue Heron and Kingfisher. There was at least one sighting of a cedar waxwing sporting its summer colors.
This section of the swim reminded me of the 2001 swim in Lake Michigan. We moved right along but had time to have two rest stops with great food donated by Whole Foods. We sat on sand banks that have surfaced since the water is so low and in one place even provided us some downed trees on which to sit.
The crew included Inger, Donna, Ron, and Michael.
As we clambored out of the river in Willow Park, we couldn't help but wish that the MetroPark would install some permanent, safe canoe/kayak access to the river. Currently all the access spots are random and created as catch can. This is a beautiful river and deserves to be accessible to small non-motorized watercraft.
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