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Long, Hard Day Paddling the Top of Lake Lanier

Long, Hard Day Paddling the Top of Lake Lanier

May 25, 2016

Traveling for work has kept my weekends slammed just catching up with family and taking care of all the little action items of life.  It surely has prevented me from getting on the water and knocking out some miles on my S2S - The Chattahoochee River from Source to Sea epic journey.  I finally got a chance to get out there with Gretchen and Brian Cummings & his two oldest boys.  Instead of doing something easy for the first trip of the season, I suckered everyone into the initial leg of the LLR - Lake Lanier Run.

Yep, you're right; Lake Lanier (especially in summer) does not sound like a place to go kayaking, but if you'll take a look at my Kayaking & Canoeing Google Map you will see that the trip titled LLR #1 actually looks like it is going down the river as shown by this first picture of Gretchen starting her longest ever kayak trip.

We immediately passed under Lula Bridge; 9 miles to go to the next one!

We did see some herons along the way and found out they can be quite loud when they decide to sound off!

The river quickly started widening as it gets ready to dump into Lake Lanier and we started seeing a bunch of fishing and ski motor boats.  After two hours of slowly crawling down the river, Gretchen and I stopped shy of the half-way point to rest on the beach at Don Carter SP for a 30 minute break.  It only got hotter, tougher, and slower after that.  We soldiered on for what seemed like forever.  Finally, we could make out Clarks Bridge where the take-out point was.  Celebrations ensued!

Unfortunately, these were early celebrations as this exceptionally straight section of the river still had about two more miles to go.  Brian and his boys finished up before us and this "half" took Gretchen and I about three hours to complete.  This section was the sight of the 1996 Olympic Rowing event and FINALLY passing the tower that sits next to the Clarks Bridge boat launch was a very welcome site.

After being exhausted from five hours on the water and my legs having an incredible sunburn, we packed it all up and crawled our way back through Gainesville and on home.  It was a very tough day, but I was glad to finally get the boats out and get on the water!