Paddling Through Portland
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Journal entry Saturday November 25th, 2006. As in many paddle trips our day begins with a shuttle. A leisure morning drive through open rural country looking out at the beautiful green countryside. Uh yeah. Here I'm chasing Travis' Toyota over the Marquam bridge at about 70 mph. Is my kayak a little crooked on top of his car?
We leave my car at Kelly Point and zoom back to Sellwood for launch. Travis tosses 6 things in his canoe and pushes off, then waits patiently below while I struggle into a drysuit, sprayskirt, booties, lifejacket and etc. etc. Yawn.
The Willamette is running a pretty good current and we approach the South end of Ross Island in less than 30 minutes. Ross is there to the right of this picture. This island was going to be donated to Portland Metro for green space. But the donator backed out and decided to only let a small piece of the island become natural habitat.
It gets shallow there to the right of the picture and we eventually turn out into the main channel to take advantage of the current.
Ross Island bridge. We're pulling off to the right of this picture to stop at the South end of Ross "Oops-I-gave-away-too-much!" Island.
That's Ross Island Sand and Gravel to the left. The tip of Ross Island to the right. The island itself is actually a hollowed out ring as the sand and gravel company has mined it over the decades for materials to build the interstate freeway, the Portland airport and numerous other edifices that make up our urban lives. In fact, the pylons of Ross Island Bridge itself are made of concrete probably extracted right here.
Cute skirt huh? (Dork!)
