Trips
After our first attempt at floating this river, I'm a little hesitant to list it as a float. I can't in good conscience recommend it as a trip unless everyone going has a paddle. The current is just too weak to carry you between the put in and the take out. As it was, it took us about five hours to go six miles with me paddling hard most of the way.
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Pros: It is a very calm stretch of river with little navigation required. There's a nice park at both the put in and take out with a reasonable amount of parking relatively close to the water at each.
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Cons: There's almost no current for most of the way, so if anyone is in an inner-tube or other non-streamlined craft, prepare to either spend all day on the river or most of the day paddling. Also, the river has steep banks on either side for most of the way. While they've done a great job of restoring the habitat, there's not much to see most of the time.
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Overall: Not recommended for inner-tubes and other non-paddled craft.
Ok, yes, I used the map for the bike trail next to the river. As far as I can tell Google Maps doesn't let you choose water travel yet.
7/16/17
I've been talking for a while about trying to do a float trip down the Sammamish River (or the Sammamish Slough, as I constantly think of it). The big trick being that for a float you need one car at the beginning and one at the end and arranging that for a solo trip is tricky at best. Fortunately, Lori was interested in giving it a go, so after some discussion we decided to give it a whirl yesterday.
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The plan was to go from Luke McRedmond park in Redmond and just float down to Wilmot Gateway Park in Woodinville. I'd done most of the paddle before by paddling up stream from Woodinville and then just floating back down. Or so I'd thought.
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We didn't get on the road until around 12:30 and as we were dropping my car off in Redmond we realized that I'd forgotten to pack the towels. Since we needed new beach towels anyway we stopped by Bed Bath and Beyond for a couple of awesome octopus towels which were then bundled up in a plastic bag and eventually stuffed in the back of my kayak. Between that, being stuck behind at least a half dozen separate drivers going ten miles under the speed limit, and getting all the gear ready to go, we didn't hit the river until 2 pm. "No problem," We thought.
Narrator: It would end up being a problem.
Just after we set off from shore. That's Lori (and my feet).
Say goodbye to those people on the dock, you'll never see any of them again...
We cast off from Luke McRedmond and after a little bit of futzing to try and figure out how best to keep our boats together, we started drifting down the river. Now, the Sammamish doesn't have what anyone would describe as a strong current so it was no problem to keep us drifting down the center of the river.
We quickly discovered that it was easiest if Lori held on to the front of my boat.
It was about 75 degrees and a beautiful cloudless day when we set out. There was a slight breeze every so often, just enough to cool you down.
This is the entrance to the area where the GM planned for the adventure to happen. Being experienced adventurers, we ignored it completely.
We just drifted for a couple hours talking and practically napping. There wasn't a ton of wildlife, but we did acquire a duck friend for a short stretch.
Hello human friend, do you have any bread?
The eighth wonder of the world, the back side of duck!
It really was a beautiful day. We were talking about how we should arrange a trip out here with our friends. The water was starting to get low in parts, so we should either do it soon or maybe earlier next year.
They have done a very nice job restoring the banks.
Looking for bridges in the distance would be an ongoing theme of the trip.
The Sammamish isn't exactly what you'd call exciting. Pretty much flat and straight for long stretches, it just kinda sits there and lets you float. Aside from the cyclists going along the trail, the only people we saw were near the beginning of our trip. When we were setting up our gear to put in the river we met a couple of kayakers taking their gear out. They mentioned that they had been part of a group of 12 kayakers but that they'd all kind of split up and gone their own way. After stealing their parking space and heading out we eventually encountered the rest of their group. The fact that they were all paddling back up the river should tell you how weak the current is. (The fact that they were all finishing as we were starting should also tell you something.)
Long, straight, trees, grass, etc. What's that? A light puffy cloud? Certainly it's picturesque and nothing more.
After about two hours of this we decided that we were getting a little bored, so I started paddling in order to move things along. Lori moved to the back of my kayak at this point. I wasn't paddling super hard, but there was a complication. See when you have a person in a float attached to your boat, paddling becomes something of a physics problem. You start to paddle for half a moment, and then their inertia hits and you're trying to accelerate both your weights, and the float isn't designed to ride on top of the water. And, once you get the float accelerated, if you slow down the float tries to keep going past you, which spins you around. So you have to paddle asymmetrically to just keep going straight, while matching the speed of the float and... It's a mess.
Ignore the giant water droplet, I tried to get an underwater shot of the flowers and didn't yet realize that I had to get the water off the lens.
​Side note. As we were paddling down I saw these little white flowers in the water. It turns out that millfoil can bloom. I never knew this. Under the water the little blossoms are surrounded by an air bubble. Later on, we saw quite a few sticking up over the surface.
Anyway, the problem that eventually developed was that it turns out I didn't go as far as I thought I had the last time I was on this river. I had paddled this great long straightaway to a bridge which I assumed to be pretty much downtown Redmond and then turned around and floated back. What I hadn't counted on was that this river is all great long straightaways and that the bridge wasn't anywhere near downtown Redmond. Also, that paddling with Lori in the float was way more work and way slower going than being by myself.
Not sure if that's a water droplet on the lens or the camera interpreting our deteriorating mood. Also, look, the puffy cloud from earlier has friends.
It was about here that I realized that we hadn't seen the bridge that leads to the Willows Lodge and Redhook, so we couldn't be close to the end yet. We did see several heron on the trip, though.
This jerk flew away every time I tried to take a picture.
​By this point I'd been paddling for at least an hour. Spirits were starting to darken slightly as each bend failed to reveal the hoped for bridge. I was paddling harder, although if I paddled too hard it would jerk around the float and yank Lori's arm around, so I had to find a steady groove. We were now saying that we'd only bring our friends on this trip if I could figure out a way to shorten it.
Then, I saw it.
Wait. Could it be? No, not the huge, darkening cloud. The condos!
Those condos in the distance. I recognize them. They're just before the bridge that leads to the Willows Lodge and Redhook. That means we're in Woodinville and nearly there.
Day 47: Our safari through darkest Woodinville drags on. Morale is low. The natives seem friendly but keep their distance...
​Except we weren't. I kept expecting each new turn to be the one that had the park and our exit point and they weren't. I had to keep looking carefully, because I remembered that it wasn't that obvious an exit By this point I was tired from paddling, Lori was cold because the float is designed to keep you partially in the water the whole time and the clouds and shadows were blocking the sun from us. There was no longer any talk of bringing our friends on this river.
Look at this smug jerk. I mean, really.
I kept paddling and, well, there's nothing really exciting. We finally found it and dragged the kayak and the float out of the water. I was too exhausted to think about taking any pictures. I moved my car over to pick up our gear and discovered it was a quarter to seven. We'd been on the river for almost five hours. I'm guessing that I was paddling pretty hard for about three of them.
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We stopped and got Slurpees despite the fact that I had left my shirt, Lori had left her pants, and we'd both left our shoes in Lori's car. We then scrapped all plans to stop somewhere and get dinner and just picked up Lori's car and headed home. While I washed off the gear Lori got us McDonalds. We ate, showered, and then slept.
That I can move my arms today is something of a miracle.
Possibly the same heron. We saw between 3 and 7 heron depending on how many were the same bird just further up the river.