2003 Year in Review

Canoeing the Rock

I should have called this column “Spare Time”. These days I have very little of it, so when I get a day off I try to make it count. Labor Day was the only full day I took off this weekend. And since there weren’t any picnics planned, we decided to get the canoe wet. We have a 17 foot aluminum canoe that we like to take to Carlton Lake a few evenings in the summer. But river travel is where we have always wanted to go.

When my husband’s friend, Jim, said he was going to canoe the Rock this weekend; my husband asked if we could tag along. I was surprised how wide the river was from the center. I’ve seen it from the road many times but it’s different when you are in the middle. I was also surprised, after boating north of Sterling, how few homes are along the Rock River. Most of the real estate along the Rock, between Sterling and Prophetstown, is corn or bean fields. We put in at the Wayside on Route 2 south of U.S. 30 and landed at Prophetstown State Park.

We had a map off the internet and I clocked it by car as being 10 miles, but we weren’t sure of distances. I knew a few landmarks, like the campgrounds outside of Lyndon and the Lyndon Bridge; but for about 6 miles (or 3 hours) we weren’t sure what was around the next bend.

The most exciting part was a few rapids under the Lyndon Bridge. Parts of the river were shallow enough to walk across with sand bars crossing most of the river where we would scrape bottom but never had to portage. The current wasn’t fast enough to spend time relaxing. To keep moving at a good pace, we needed to keep our oars paddling. The water was calm, temperatures perfect, and no sign of boats or people until we reached between Lyndon and Prophetstown. The best part was not knowing what we be around the next bend.

Total float time was 4 hours.

by Barb Benson, theCity1.com
September 2, 2003