Last evening, Jerry and I had found an excellent campsite just in the nick of time.  But we’d had no time to enjoy it.  So we’ll pick things up with the two very refreshed travelers awakening to the sounds of birdsong and the whisper of the river just as the light was getting strong enough [...]

Yesterday on the Wateree ended with Jerry feeling much better, which was an incredible relief.  When you’re in the middle of nowhere, an illness or injury that might not be serious back in the comforts of civilization can be life-threatening.  We’ll start our third day on the river a little before daybreak, at our lovely [...]

We left Jerry and myself sleeping fitfully under the I-20 Bridge over the Wateree, hoping that the river didn’t wake us unexpectedly in the night. When we awoke, just before dawn, the tent was still mercifully free of riverwater. But it sounded as though every semi east of the Mississippi was crossing the bridge above [...]

For our third annual river trip, my good  friend Jerry Craven and I decided to expand our horizons beyond the borders of the Lone Star State. I lived in South Carolina back in the 1990s when I was getting my MFA, and I canoed many of the Palmetto State’s rivers then.  One that I missed [...]

We left Jerry and myself sitting beside a bonfire and sipping cool intoxicants beneath a carpet of bright stars.  Jerry might even have been telling a fish story or two.  We’ll pick up just after sunrise, with Jerry back on the riverbank starting our last day on the river by trying to catch the biggest [...]

We left our intrepid, but exhausted, travelers sleeping like dead men on a high sandbank overlooking the Brazos River.  We find them again just after dawn, taking in a sunrise made particularly lovely by the Gulf clouds carried up by the south wind that blew all night. 

When we left Jerry and myself, we were sitting next to a roaring fire, enjoying the sounds of nightbirds and coyotes, and the whisper of John Graves’s river passing by our camp.  We’ll pick up just before sunup, as the dawn breeze flapping the tent wakes us to a perfectly clear sky.

I’ll continue this blog with Jerry Craven’s and my trip down the Brazos River in May 2008.  We did the forty-five mile stretch between the Highway 16 Bridge just below the Possum Kingdom Dam and the Highway 180 Bridge outside Mineral Wells in my trusty flatbottom green Pelican Colorado canoe.  It took us four days; [...]

When we left our intrepid explorers, they were camped in a soggy bog of a site somewhere between Colorado Bend State Park and Lake Buchanan. We’ll pick up as they awaken in their tent to the serenade of an unexpected visitor . . .

When we left Jerry Craven and myself, we were camped on an island in the middle of the Colorado River, savoring cool beverages and the serenade of a hoot owl.  We’ll continue the next morning, just before dawn…