Ouachita River Awareness Float & Trip Report

[Mike B]

I'm posting this for some freinds we have known for several years. They are very interesting and creative musicians best known as the Itinerant Locals from Hot Springs, AR. Zac and Cheryl (the Itinerant Locals) have recentally completed the first part of a canoe/boat trip that will take them from the Ouachita Mountains to "Old River Control" in Louisiana.

Zac and Cheryl have put this trip together themselves to help raise awareness and to put a face on the Ouachita River. They are launching this weekend for the second leg of the trip that will take about 30 days. They will continue by canoe from Remmel Dam to Arkadelphia where they will switch vessels to a solar powered party bardge. Please take a look at their web-site as they will be making updates when possible.

If you are interested in supporting this trip in any way please PM me. Financial donations are always welcome.

"That’s right MONEY. We are financing the whole float trip ourselves, and it hurts. We are sponsored by Low Key Arts, a 501(c)3 non-profit dedicated to bringing music and art to Garland County. Please consider a gift to help raise awareness of preservation efforts in the Ouachita water shed. All donations are tax deductible." They can be addressed:
Low Key Arts
for Ouachita Float Tour
118 Arbor Street
Hot Springs, AR 71901

http://www.polkayoureyeout.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.myspace.com/polkayoureyeout" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.ouachitariverkeeper.org" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Upper Ouachita River Trip Report:

I really never imagined it would be so fun. Though I new that all the work was to get us out the door and onto the river, I had kind of resigned myself to the idea that the process of the expedition would take over and dwarf the actual canoeing down the river.
But it really didn’t happen. OK, I admit, that first day was out of control. Everything was still in piles in the driveway at ten when I had hoped to leave. At least we didn’t have anyone else to worry about. We had originally planned to go with our best camping buds Bob and Karen, but Bob’s knee exercised its veto powers, and they couldn’t make it.

Next we tried to cobble together some sort of support from all the people we know who are unemployed right now. But for naught; everyone had an extenuating circumstance; which shows it can’t be too bad around here economically if the jobless are too busy to go canoeing. It had started to get complicated, with shifting support staff and trips in and out of Hot Springs; Cheryl and I finally decided to call it and just drive the shuttles ourselves.
So we finally headed out Tuesday about noon in the van full of gear and the wagon with the boat and kids, and drove out toward Pencil Bluff. We first went to Shirley Creek Float Camp, where we dropped the van. Then all of us took the wagon up to Pine Ridge (which we missed: turn left at the round church sign BEFORE Lum and Abner). We finally got to pile in the canoe and try this trip out.

The sun was bright and air had warmed from a chilly morning that hadn’t frostbitten the garden as we pulled into the swift water under the bridge. Our canoe turned and shot us down a chute past the old washed out bridge and it all just melted away. As we bobbed over the rapids and looked down the Valley I realized what the goal had been all along. The dogwoods were blooming, May apples and Indian paintbrush dominated the forest floor, the water was fresh and quick with the recent rains. As we floated by someone yelled a big hello from his yard, telling us we were the first floaters he’d seen this spring, all of us caught up in the beautiful day and the promise of more to come. The six short river miles were soon up, and we spotted the snake-infested slough and persimmon trees we raided last fall when we camped at Shirley Creek.

Then the shuttle. We had to drive one every day but Dragover Day, and they weren’t really to much of a bother. The walkie-talkies make it fun with the kids chattering through the ride. It went like this: tie up boat, get in car, graze kids and other livestock, drive back to van and get in, follow Cheryl past tonight’s campground to tomorrow’s take out, leave car, drive van back to camp and set up camp, cook dinner, etc. It worked. I felt a little guilty about all the repeated trips over the same stretch of pavement, but what can you do? Well you can 1) get ground support, which we tried but failed to do, or 2) camp entirely out of the canoe, so there is only one Big Shuttle. But we brought the instruments, and the beanbags, and all the stuff for a week’s worth of luxury tailgate camping. When we start out he lower Ouachita we’re going to be canoe camping unsupported until we get to Arkadelphia and transfer to the solar troller. Maybe that can offset our carbon from the first go round.

The next day Eureka started out the morning catching a respectable bass. About 14 inches, she got it off a little crappie jig. She said that morning that she wanted to fish, so I set her up down at the river and went back up to finish breaking camp. A little while later, Zephyr comes trudging up the hill and yells at us to come look at Eureka’s fish. Cheryl grabs the camera and down we go. She’d gotten it right up to the bank and was keeping it tight on the hook, though it was still in the water. I pulled it out for her so she could pose for the all important photo. We ended up releasing it; no one was hungry right then. We just about busted with pride for our determined little lunker hunter.

That day was a long one. A 14 mile canoe float. Corbett Deary had tried to tell me that was too long for kids, and he was right. But it’s amazing how our little troopers always manage to rise to the occasion, if you don’t give them a choice. We saw all kinds of big bluffs, white water, and big wide slow places, a cave, and lots of gravel bars. There is some national forest on the banks of the river we floated, but a lot of the land is private. There were everything from big new fancy houses on the bluffs looking over the river to wide pastures dotted with old farmsteads. There were a lot of trailers too, from a fishing shack with porch on a wagon, to a tiny old camping trailer retrofitted with a picture window and a shed roof, to standard issue mobile homes. It seems a lot of folks want a little get away by the water.

We camped that night at Rocky Shoals. We were sure glad to roll around that last bend and see Camp Ozark sitting by the bridge. We met some fishermen that night who said they had snatched 60 fish out of the stream between Cherry Hill and Shirley Creek. They had two canoes and two minivans and were headed to town for burgers because they had been camping and eating fish for three days already. They were from out of state, and took fishing trips to Arkansas often, but this was the first time they had done the Ouachita. This guy had this fervor to him as he showed me his gear, like a religious man on a revival tour, talking of places he’d been and the luck he’d had, fishing. He liked to think he’d still canoe if he couldn’t fish, but didn’t sound convinced. Then he rattled off all the other wild life he’d seen, mostly birds: eagles, hawks, osprey.

The next day started overcast, and got wetter. We left nice and early, but within a half hour Cheryl and I had our wet gear on. We put the kids beside each other in the canoe and put the umbrella over them. Eureka had brought her lap desk and took the opportunity to get some coloring in. Zephyr held the brolly, and somehow also managed to get totally soaked. The rain wasn’t heavy, somewhere between a mist and a drizzle. It was comfortable as long as we were on the river, but once we stopped paddling, I realized how wet my pants had become. But it turned out to be one of the most beautiful floats of the trip. The overcast quiet cool air cut the glare and widened our world up the banks and into the forest floor. The river itself was quick and exciting, with turn after turn of swift rippled chutes, and the occasional white water or shelf. The ride was over all too soon, and we were at Dragover.

We dried off and ran our shuttle, which included a trip to the grocery for the Dragover Queen Flotilla the next day. It continued to drizzle through our provisioning run to Bob’s Food City and the thrift store. (Read more about it in Cheryl’s post further down this page.) By the time we made it back to camp, the weather had “broken”. The clouds had shattered and the shards were being swept away by a strong southish wind. We set everything up, really tying the tent down. The wind stayed strong and gusty all afternoon. I gathered some wood and started a fire, and we hung out and got warm and had dinner. After dinner, it became clear that the weather wasn’t done yet; we secured the camp in case of rain, and watched the storm roll in.

We didn’t really know what to expect until the cell phone lit up a couple times. It was Bob, telling us that a tornado had leveled the Mena Courthouse and the storm system was headed right our way. Where we were it was windy, and we were seeing a lot of flashes of lightning, but it wasn’t crashing down around us, and there wasn’t any rain. Bob was pretty serious about us seeking some sort of shelter, however, and tried to impress upon us how gruesome the radar image was on his screen and how squarely on top of us it was sitting. We didn’t really want to go anywhere, but once the kids heard the word “tornado”, it didn’t take much convincing to get them out of their warm bed and into the van. We drove to the end of the road, getting more pumped up on weather hysteria through the cell phone and radio report, until we go to the main road. When we were in the clear on a little rise, we could finally see the lay of things. And we were in the middle of it. A line of angry clouds massed over us, making a line in the sky from south to north, constantly pulsing and strobing with lightning. There was a very little bit of rain and surprisingly little thunder but lots of wind, but it was suddenly obvious that it was too late: if this storm wanted us, it had us. We couldn’t get anywhere out of range since we were in the exact middle of it. So we just turned around and idled the mile or so back to the campground. By the time we got back in the tent the wind had slacked but it was still warm, so we opened the windows and watched the river by lightning light.

The next morning was Dragover Day. I woke early to a steady, cold North West wind, and moved over to the sheltered side of the campground to cook breakfast. You can get some details of how Cheryl handled this day down below here, on her post. Needless to say, I don’t need to say anything about her mood that morning!! So I won’t!! But I’ll leave you some idea about how much fun she was: (how do you make that emoticon where you’re poking yourself in the eye with a stick?) Cheryl soon cheered up and Dragover day was a success. The Drydens and the Solleders showed up to camp, with more people coming just to cook and hang out. Cheryl won Dragover Queen, which was actually a pretty shabby title considering how much work she had to do to get all the kids and food and stuff out there and down the river day after day, but she really wanted the 8-track player, so I think she was satisfied. More camping, drinking, having fun.

The next morning was brisk. Everyone had an agenda, so we packed out of there real smart like and set off down the river for our last day canoeing. We took Elizabeth Solleder with us, who was a real asset. She managed to take the only picture we got of our family turned out to canoe. She also read the end of Stuart Little to the smalls when the day got boring. And boring it did get, unless you count as interesting the game: “OMG is the bridge around the next bend?”. See, after about 3 or 4 miles of the 10 mile day we slide down a rapid and see a big huge bass boat sitting below it fishing. At which point we realized the rest of the day was going to be flat water canoeing, with a slight headwind. Cheryl and I set about it, and frankly rocked out for a few hours. We tortured ourselves down the channel, wondering how much further the burn would last and if we’d make it back to our gig on time. But of course we did. We pulled out of the USACE campground on 27 about 4:15, grabbed the car that Kelly and Cheyenne had dropped off for us, ran back for the van and headed home. We pulled into the driveway at 5:30, which gave us plenty of time to take a shower each, get into gear, unload the car, load up the instruments, drop the filthy children off for Shea to bathe (Bill offered!), and make it to the Brauhaus.

What a trip. The 40 miles on the water were definitely the highlight. Though the weather was a little dodgy, I think I’d still take spring-like weather over mosquitoes and snakes (didn’t see a single one, though we saw LOTS of turtles). The forest wildflowers were at their peak, and the fishing was good too. The Ouachita River between Pine Ridge and Lake Ouachita is a great float trip, with well maintained campgrounds (and they’re FREE. Thanks Montgomery County), great water, scenic landscape, the whole package. We’ll be back, wanna go?

[sugarmtngal]

Thanks Mike B............. You should write a book!
Are you going to Canoe School?

[Jim Krueger]

Mike,

Please wish your friends well, the Ouachita is special to me and many others as well! It sounds like they are off to a good start and I just know they will have life-time memories upon completion of their journey! I personally was born in Camden 'Queen City of the Ouachita' and have fond memories of that area of the river growing up. Later I lived for more than thirty years further up the Ouachita, at Arkadelphia. In my own floating travels along the river, I have enjoyed several of the upper sections they just floated, as well as having paddled every mile of the lower river from Remmel Dam to Camden! The longest continuous trip I ever made was Arkadelphia to Camden during one of my Spring Breaks during college years. I would gladly do that section again twice over in my kayak as to ever have to paddle it in a flat-bottomed boat with no motor again :shock:
As much as I have paddled the Ouachita, my total mileage pales in comparison to the epic trip my college roommate, Glynn O'Neal of Malvern, accomplished one Summer during College. Glynn was a biology/botany major at Henderson and a great lover of the Ouachita. At the beginning of the Summer of 1975 he had a friend drop him off at the headwaters of the Ouachita, a couple of miles North of Mena, and he paddled the entire river to it's confluence in East Central Louisiana, THEN paddled&polled his way back home to Malvern! Glynn paddled this whole trip in his Bluehole OCA 17' canoe, just himself and his dog and minimal camping gear&provisions. Along the way he camped in abandoned/unoccupied fishing camps when he could and often was taken in for a day or two at a time by folks living along the river. He even signed the registers at the locks he navigated below Camden. One of the sadder events though was having his dog run over and killed in Camden where he was sheltering from a tornado. It was very important/symbolic to Glynn to float the river in it's entirety, so on the upper stretches he even paddled the whole lengths of Lakes Ouachita, Hamilton, and Catherine. I think the journey down Lake Ouachita was probably the most unnerving part of his trip as he related later.
Again, good wishes to your friends and I hope the sun will shine abundantly on their solar panels :)

Best Regards
Jim

[rickyrod]

last year , I met a man at the rockport ledge watching us surf . he said that he had paddled/pushed his way up from Hotsprings to Mena and back down to I forget how far down stream but he said it took him two 1/2 months . When I hear of journey's like these on the very beutiful rivers close to home it makes me proud that folk still do things like this for the things they love not giving a damn the consequences or the trouble like finances and the work it takes . they just want to do it . thats what make you great.and hero's to us all ! keep it up and have FUN> Thank you.