Kayaking the Jack Fork

We walked around the campground late last night.  The one loop with electricity was mostly full, the other six or seven loops were mostly deserted.  The real treat, however, was looking up.  Because the sky was so dark, the stars were bright and plentiful, and the Milky Way was plainly visible.  We don’t get that very often back home.

On the agenda for today: paddling a section of the Jack Fork river.  This campground was to be our put-in spot, and we would take out in the town of Eminence, about seven miles downriver.  This involved a bit of driving since we had to spot a bicycle in Eminence, but we managed to get on the river just after 9am.

This is a popular place, especially on summer weekends, and we could see other groups setting up to get on the river, but we had the river to ourselves the entire distance.  So it was very peaceful.

It was a swift river.  Numerous rapids and corners and deadfall made navigation a necessity.  We finished the seven-mile trip in almost exactly two hours.  A delightful paddle on a beautiful morning with great scenery the entire distance.  The water was crystal clear and we could see the occasional fish below us, as well as the rocky bottom moving by.

I biked back to the RV, which we left at the campground and then came back and picked up Deb and the kayaks.  We then drove back to Alley Spring to check out the old grist mill.  By this time I had driven this section of road several times and was getting familiar with it.  Seven times, to be exact, one of those on a bicycle.

The main attraction at Alley Spring is the century-old mill situated on Alley Spring.  Built here in 1894 to take advantage of the 81 million gallons of water a day that came from the spring, this mill had the machines that converted wheat into flour, a rather complicated process.  The operation was only marginally successful, however.  The constant water supply seemed ideal, but recurring floods hampered its operation.

The mill now is an iconic structure in this area, the subject of many photographs, and is open to the public.  The area is very picturesque, with the spring being a brilliant turquoise color and lots of greenery and moss around the streams.  We took our pictures and hiked the overlook loop trail around the area before returning to the RV.

We deliberated on what to do next as we want to do another couple of sections of these rivers.  Some of these sections would require a 17-mile bike ride back to the start on very steep roads just to do an 8-mile section of the river.  We did end up with a plan, and ended up at Shawnee Creek, a campground consisting of six sites on this creek.  We were the first ones there at this first-come, first-served campground, but a large family came in right after us.  So we don’t have the place to ourselves, but we are still in a lovely setting, backed right up to the creek.