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.
There it is.
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.
Gassed up.
Grabbed some early lunch down the road.
mmmm
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.
Near where it empties into the Hudson in Kingston.
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.
It’s not all pretty though.
Closer to its source up in the Catskills.
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.
I had the whole day to kill and I’m pretty fascinated by canals so I gave it a shot.
it turned out I wasn’t all that interested after all. I made it to two locks out of the five and got bored.
High Falls turned out to be your typical funky HV spot. It’s not all that far from Woodstock.
I ended doing two or three laps of town before I found my put-in which was just above the actual high falls.
It turned out to be about as gentle a place to paddle as you could ever expect.
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.
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.
Typical upstate: a wooden deck mounted on some pontoons with a trolling motor on the back.
More gentle summer creek paddling. I was disappointed there wasn’t any visible canal evidence on this section. Nice workout though.
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.
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.
Of course now I’m thinking about a beer so pretty soon I sort of lost interest in my workout.
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.
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.
Made it back; probably only spent two hours on the water.
Further reading…
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