River: Staunton
Section of river: Watkins bridge to 360
Time it took to float: 5 hour from put-in to island, 2 1/2 hours from island to 360
Distance: Approximately ten miles
Water level: 6.3 ft
Times doing this: First ever in VA!
Amount of days: two (one night)
Amount of rafts: three (one sunk)
Amount of people: ten
Review:
We set out with three rafts and ten people, a fairly small amount for what we’re used to. Everything went well until almost 2000 ft down river one raft starts to sink. We took everything of the sinking raft and moved it to our raft and the cargo raft. Thankfully had the cargo raft other wise we would have been crowded. The two people from the sinking raft moved to ours. And after we tied up the sunken raft we set out.
Despite the small problem of the sinking raft every thing continued to go smoothly. We fired up the grill and Dad made some kabobs (some would be an understatement). The kids played in the water. Either floating on tubes or in life jackets even just swimming at times. The river was lovely. The river bed was mostly sand so you could just swim along and have a good time.
We ate snacks a floated until we came to the Staunton River battlefield park. Where we got out and walked around. They have an amazing earthworks there that was made in the civil war.
After that we continued down river to where we found a camping site. It was a stone bank along a large island. We parked our rafts, unpacked, found wood, started a fire and the some of the kids explored the island (they got all scraped up walking through it). It rain for 5/10 minuets and then the sky was clear for the rest of the day. We had supper and did some fishing. We caught some, mostly catfish. The largest being 14″. A dog inhabited our camp in the evening and stayed through the night. A dear tried to cross to the island on the middle of the night. But the dog scared it off.
The next day we got going at about 10:00 or so. Everything went smoothly and we had fun. We took out at 12:30 loaded everything up and headed home.
Over all we past over only one set of rapid. We lost a tube. And the fishing was good at the camping spot although we didn’t have any catches while we were rafting.
Check back next year around May or April for news on what you need to join us as float.
Thank you,
The Logs on Water crew.
