Day 2

Big day today. We set an alarm to wake ourselves up at 8 am thinking that we would be on the river by 10. Things didn't really go as planned. Camp took much longer than we though to clean up and pack up so we weren't able to get on to the river until around 11. This put us in a tough position as we had to travel 14 miles before 4:30 so that we could be locked through the George Andrews dam before it closed. We had to keep a very consistent pace in order to reach this goal as we had a longer than planned lunch break and an unexpected visit from our two mom's. Even though we had only been gone a day our mothers thoroughly enjoyed seeing our red and tan kayaks come around a bend in the river. They proceeded to give us much love and advice so as to send us on our way again an hour later. This seriously cut our time short. Thankfully we made it to the dam on time and were able to lock through, making friends with the dam worker in the process. After the dam we took a much needed and appreciated brake. Along the river we saw several fisherman on the bank and headed over to talk to them. Each had seen us paddling in our kayaks and formulated the same three questions. "Where are ya'll from?...How long have ya'll been paddling?...Where are ya'll headed?" (Each said with thick but comforting southern accents) As we answered these three questions, the fisherman, and the few other people we saw today, all had the same reaction: wow. They were all amazed and were quick to help in any way they could. We continued paddling another 3 miles in hopes of finding a place to camp with no luck until we found a spot that could work. There was a very steep sand bar with a flat spot on the top where we could camp. Along the bank in a bass fishing boat was a man and (what looked like) his two sons fishing. As we were scouting out the possible camp site with slight distaste but also a hint of desperation, the man in the boat floated over to us. As we talked to him for about five minutes he not only told us that there was a much better place to camp two miles down the river but also offered to give us the fish he had caught so we could have dinner for the night. His kindness blew me away. I can only hope that the rest of the people we meet along this journey are as nice as the ones we've met so far. We skated into our perfect, high set sand bar camp site right as light was starting fade and have since set up camp and eaten a wholesome dinner of black beans and peanut butter bagels (we were a bit tired to do any other cooking). With our alarms now set for 6:30 I'm excited to get an early start on the river tomorrow.