Ipswich River In Mid-Summer 2019

I haven’t been blogging about my kayak trips lately, but I took a trip up the Ipswich River this past Sunday (8/4) and had to write something about that, it was so beautiful.  Took off from the usual spot on the road from Topsfield and soon was just enthralled.  It was almost exactly the middle of Summer and the flowers and trees were beautiful and the dragonflies were thick.

You probably can't see all the bees buzzing around the flowers above.  I really like lily pad flowers and many of them were as decadent as they ever get.  Most bloom a pure white with an intense yellow interior, but some of these were blushing a bit, and some were entirely a startling pink.

I also passed two swan family groups with two adults and a gaggle of cygnets, who were almost as large as their parents already, but still in juvenile colors.  Lots of turtles of course, hundreds of birds (I even saw one cormorant and one kingfisher), and a couple of muskrats.

There were also some of the red spiky flowers you get later in Summer.  They usually show up as isolated splashes of color but there were some groups of them exhibiting a deep shade of scarlet.

And it was as crowded as I’ve ever seen it on the river.  Probably all of the Foote Brothers canoes and kayaks were out, and most of the Audubon canoes.  I passed two young girls (10?) with matching kayaks/paddles who were doing great against a strong current in the narrow part where I passed them, and singing songs from The Jungle Book incredibly well.  I complimented them on it and they thought ok, and launched into another.  They must have the record and had the parts down perfectly.

After one song, one girl said to the other, “Can I be on top for this next one?”

The other girl said, “No, your part goes like this [sings the opening of the lower part].”

“But I just thought maybe we could switch for this one.”

The other girl stared at her and gave her the dreaded pause.  “You’re Mowgli!”

The first girl shrugged.  She knew that was the end of the conversation.  I mean, what was she going to say, that she didn’t want to be Mowgli??

Another interaction was that two young women were headed downstream as fast as they could and you could tell they were in a bit of distress.  I stopped to take a flower picture and they got close enough to me to shout.  “Excuse me, excuse me!” they said.  “Yes?” I said.  “Uh … how do you get out of here?” one of them asked.

We were on the river, miles from anywhere.  I said, “Just head downstream.”  I could see they were in a Foote Brothers canoe and must have been driven upstream on their truck and then sent downstream.  “Foote Brothers is in a couple of miles still, it’s the first building you’ll see on the left,” I told them.  They moaned.  “Just stay in the middle of the river, the downstream current is strongest there,” I advised.  That made them stop and look around them, they were stunned that there was such a thing as a current and there was a strategy to dealing with it.  “You learn something new every day,” I said.

“Yeah,” one of them said, “I’ve learned that I’m NEVER GOING IN A CANOE again!”

“Oh come on,” I said.  “By the middle of the week you’ll be bored back in your office and telling your friends about what a great time you had on the river this weekend.”

She considered it.  “I hope so!” she said.

I told her I hoped so too and took off quick before they could ask me to call them an Uber.