Whitesand River

On Thursday July 8, I went canoeing with Samuel on the Whitesand River; we started at the bottom of the Theodore dam. The water was foamy and it stunk.



We saw some pelicans on the bank, a few great blue herons, and lots of ducks. There were a few bridges, and we had to keep watching for barb wire fences crossing the river.



I was using the small paddle but then I switched to Samuel’s medium paddle, I had a lot more control and we were going a lot faster, then I switched to Samuel’s big paddle, it was a little too big for me, but the medium one was about the right size. When I switched back to the little one it felt like I was trying to paddle the canoe with a stick.



The river was full of turns and if you stretched it out it would be twice as long, but the river was swollen, so paddling was not hard.



Then we got to a road that the river had overflowed and the water was flowing fast, I was a little scared at first but when I got there it was nothing, then we turned the wrong way and we were paddling over a field but the field ended so we went back to the river.

[Sadly, an elderly man recently tried to drive his truck across the overflowing Whitesand River and his truck was swept into the river. Two men are still missing. - Samuel]



A little after we started we lost track of the river, everything was so flooded that we had started paddling though the trees.




After that the river became very bendy, turning 180 degrees, there was a flooded field that we could have paddled across and cut off a half hour, but we decided to stay with the river.



When we got to the next bridge past highway 47 it was time to stop for the day so we called my mom to come get us. We also saw some odd birds that looked strange because their beaks were bent up.



The water overflowed the road at another spot so we paddled along the ditch to where mom was. While we were tying up the canoe Samuel found a tadpole that had all four legs, but still had a tail, after taking a picture of it we put it back in the water, loaded up our gear, and went home.
- Will