So what's nicer than a beautiful weekend day getting back on the Hudson? Another beautiful weekend day back on the Hudson the next weekend!
This was a Sebago trip that my friend Laurie B. planned. I help out with the Sebago calendar and when she asked me to put the trip on there I emailed her right back saying "OK, and sign me up!"
We put in at Englewood and paddled up to Alpine, just under 5 miles north (and directly across from Yonkers, the location of the prior week's festivities), looking up at the magnificent cliffs of the Palisades. The link goes to the website of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission; this park, running from just south of the George Washington Bridge to just north of the border between Bergen County in New Jersey and New York's Rockland County, is a real local treasure, with the amazing cliffs, beautiful woods, a couple of marinas, a number of nice little picnic and recreation areas, and then a spectacular hiking trail from end to end (mostly easy, level hiking with one challenging scramble area at the "Giant's Stairs" section).
Englewood used to be a favorite day trip destination for the crew back in my Pier 63 days - it's about a 10 mile paddle but timed correctly you had a strong current assist both ways. I always loved setting out from our seriously urban rusty barge launch and then paddling up and having a leisurely lunch in all the natural beauty. Alpine has good memories too - there's a grand old stone pavilion there (it's in the picture of us on the beach at Alpine), and back in the days when Irish music and dance was my main hobby, one of the highlights of the summer was always the Alpine Ceili, which was put on by Manhattan's Irish Arts Center and always featured great local musicians. I don't think that happens any more, but there was an overlap between my taking up kayaking in 1998 and the end of the ceili, and there was one year when the ceili just happened to be on a weekend when the tides were perfect - and I threw some dancing clothes and shoes in a drybag, jumped in my shiny red Seda Glider (a faster boat that I used to own), and paddled to the ceili! Oh, the looks on people's faces when I turned up that way - priceless! Such a great day.
So it was so nice to get back to this much-loved stretch of the river for a day. It was a much grayer day, and a bit breezier, but the Hudson is beautiful in all sorts of moods. With the wind and current at our backs, we absolutely flew from Englewood to Alpine; we took a nice long leisurely lunch break there and then had a good strong current sending us home. It did get choppy enough from the wind against the current that if we'd had less experienced paddlers along, they might not have enjoyed the trip back as much as the trip up, but we had a small and solid enough group that the conditions were just good fun. And just the first hints of fall foliage!
And speaking of playful conditions - as soon as I wrap this up I'm off to play in some small surf with Kayak Dov and my fellow June IDW participants. I haven't gotten around to a writeup for that, but I will at some point - it was great and a really good next step in my continuing progress of getting my paddling act re-built after cancer (as mentioned in the last post). We were supposed to have a surf day during the workshop but it got thunderstormed out - Dov and Dale Williams (Georgia based instructor, great teacher) came up with some solid alternatives, but Dov went above and beyond what most instructors would do and offered us a makeup day later in the year. That's today! This will actually be my first time out in surf since my surgery. Surf report according to Surfline.com: "The surf is small and inconsistent but enough for the bigger boards if you are motivated to get wet" - well, sea kayaks can count as "bigger boards", so I'm hoping that this ends up being the perfect re-introduction. Fingers crossed, knocking wood, wish me luck!
All pictures after this - click on any for a slide show view.
This was a Sebago trip that my friend Laurie B. planned. I help out with the Sebago calendar and when she asked me to put the trip on there I emailed her right back saying "OK, and sign me up!"
We put in at Englewood and paddled up to Alpine, just under 5 miles north (and directly across from Yonkers, the location of the prior week's festivities), looking up at the magnificent cliffs of the Palisades. The link goes to the website of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission; this park, running from just south of the George Washington Bridge to just north of the border between Bergen County in New Jersey and New York's Rockland County, is a real local treasure, with the amazing cliffs, beautiful woods, a couple of marinas, a number of nice little picnic and recreation areas, and then a spectacular hiking trail from end to end (mostly easy, level hiking with one challenging scramble area at the "Giant's Stairs" section).
Englewood used to be a favorite day trip destination for the crew back in my Pier 63 days - it's about a 10 mile paddle but timed correctly you had a strong current assist both ways. I always loved setting out from our seriously urban rusty barge launch and then paddling up and having a leisurely lunch in all the natural beauty. Alpine has good memories too - there's a grand old stone pavilion there (it's in the picture of us on the beach at Alpine), and back in the days when Irish music and dance was my main hobby, one of the highlights of the summer was always the Alpine Ceili, which was put on by Manhattan's Irish Arts Center and always featured great local musicians. I don't think that happens any more, but there was an overlap between my taking up kayaking in 1998 and the end of the ceili, and there was one year when the ceili just happened to be on a weekend when the tides were perfect - and I threw some dancing clothes and shoes in a drybag, jumped in my shiny red Seda Glider (a faster boat that I used to own), and paddled to the ceili! Oh, the looks on people's faces when I turned up that way - priceless! Such a great day.
So it was so nice to get back to this much-loved stretch of the river for a day. It was a much grayer day, and a bit breezier, but the Hudson is beautiful in all sorts of moods. With the wind and current at our backs, we absolutely flew from Englewood to Alpine; we took a nice long leisurely lunch break there and then had a good strong current sending us home. It did get choppy enough from the wind against the current that if we'd had less experienced paddlers along, they might not have enjoyed the trip back as much as the trip up, but we had a small and solid enough group that the conditions were just good fun. And just the first hints of fall foliage!
And speaking of playful conditions - as soon as I wrap this up I'm off to play in some small surf with Kayak Dov and my fellow June IDW participants. I haven't gotten around to a writeup for that, but I will at some point - it was great and a really good next step in my continuing progress of getting my paddling act re-built after cancer (as mentioned in the last post). We were supposed to have a surf day during the workshop but it got thunderstormed out - Dov and Dale Williams (Georgia based instructor, great teacher) came up with some solid alternatives, but Dov went above and beyond what most instructors would do and offered us a makeup day later in the year. That's today! This will actually be my first time out in surf since my surgery. Surf report according to Surfline.com: "The surf is small and inconsistent but enough for the bigger boards if you are motivated to get wet" - well, sea kayaks can count as "bigger boards", so I'm hoping that this ends up being the perfect re-introduction. Fingers crossed, knocking wood, wish me luck!
All pictures after this - click on any for a slide show view.
4 comments:
Love your photos of the river
Oh my goodness...all I could think was how brave you are! Beautiful pictures of a place I would so like to visit one day.
Have a great day!
b+
https://www.retireinstyleblog.com/2019/09/question-what-do-non-creative-people-do.html
Great photos! Notice NYC is having a heated up fall so your upcoming photos will or won't have some foliage reds?
I'm going up for a paddle with Sebago at the American Canoe Association's camp on Lake Sebago (the club's namesake) in Harriman State Park weekend after next. Hoping for some foliage there!
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