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Summer Saturday Upstate NY (Hudson Valley)
So I drove upstate last Saturday to visit my dad. My sister was driving him over to a Maine to visit one of my other sisters so I got there early. My kids and wife had their own shit going on so I was on my own all day. I figured I would stop someplace in the Hudson Valley for a paddle on my way back home. I visited my dad; they hit the road and I went ahead and mowed his lawn for him. It was hot enough that about halfway through I really wanted a Utica Club. I finished up and checked his fridge. Nothing. Easy solution.
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There it is.
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Luckily I thought to steal some ice and a ziploc from my dad. There was a lunchbox in my cars backseat already. My blue cooler would have been better but we make do.
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Gassed up.
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Grabbed some early lunch down the road.
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mmmm
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Then I hit the road again. As I got on the Thruway I was starting to think Rondout Creek. I’ve explored different bits and pieces of the Rondout before. It’s pretty idyllic at times.
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Near where it empties into the Hudson in Kingston.
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Of course this is upstate so there’s a canal. The lower Rondout used to be part of the Delaware & Hudson Canal. There are still lots of dams and defunct locks and stuff.
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It’s not all pretty though.
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Closer to its source up in the Catskills.
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So one section I hadn’t paddled before is called Highfalls. There is a town called High Falls too. There’s supposed to be a D&H Canal Museum there so I punched that into my phone and followed the directions. I’m not sure if I drove past the museum and didn’t spot it or if it’s closed or what but I couldn’t find it. I did stumble across this.
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I had the whole day to kill and I’m pretty fascinated by canals so I gave it a shot.
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it turned out I wasn’t all that interested after all. I made it to two locks out of the five and got bored.
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High Falls turned out to be your typical funky HV spot. It’s not all that far from Woodstock.
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I ended doing two or three laps of town before I found my put-in which was just above the actual high falls.
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It turned out to be about as gentle a place to paddle as you could ever expect.
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I was theoretically paddling upstream but there was almost no current. I did find a shallow spot at one point. Somebody had anchored some homemade channel markers on one side. Never saw that before. Super helpful.
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There were some houses here and there along the bank, and a golf course. I found myself wondering how much these people spent on this deck.
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Typical upstate: a wooden deck mounted on some pontoons with a trolling motor on the back.
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More gentle summer creek paddling. I was disappointed there wasn’t any visible canal evidence on this section. Nice workout though.
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Then, in the distance I spotted an island with some smoke wafting through the trees. As I got closer I could see a variety of different small boats along its shore- kayaks, canoes, row boats, inflatable paddle boards… party spot.
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As I got closer they called out and offered me a beer. I told them I had it covered and thanked them and kept going. They looked like they were having fun- probably twenty folks of all ages just hanging out grilling and drinking and laying in hammocks while the kids and a dog played in a stream. Awesome spot for it.
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Of course now I’m thinking about a beer so pretty soon I sort of lost interest in my workout.
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I can’t even describe how good the first mouthful of an ice cold Utica Club tastes on a hot summer afternoon while floating in a kayak on Rondout Creek, after paddling upstream for forty minutes or an hour. It was very satisfying.I’m not gonna say you should buy a flat bottomed kayak just to make drinking beer easier but I will say that it DOES make it easier.
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This should have been the leisurely down- current drifting part of the trip but there was zero flow to this section of the Rondout so I had to keep paddling.
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Made it back; probably only spent two hours on the water.
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Further reading…
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