A Thanksgiving To Remember

The sun was shining when we work up Thanksgiving morning, and we were so thankful to see a clear, blue sky. We spent several hours wheeling past farm fields and patches of forest. A flock of tundra swans flew overhead and geese searched for food in the fields.

Around noon we reached the Chester River, which we would paddle to the Chesapeake Bay. As we wheeled towards the river a woman came out to the road and explained that a friend had called her and told her we were walking towards the river. She offered to let us launch our canoe from the yard and shuttled us into her house to meet her family and drink steaming cups of coffee. Unfortunately, we couldn't stay long because strong winds were forecast for Friday so we needed to paddle as far as we could before the winds picked up and trapped us on shore.

The Chester River slowly grew wider as we approached the bay and the cattails marches were full of ducks and geese. As the sun set we continued paddled south, pushed by s gentle tailwind. A sliver of a moon provided just enough light to see the shoreline. At first we were anxious about paddled into the darkness because we didn’t know where we would stop and camp for the night, but after a while we became more relaxed and enjoyed watching the stars and talking about our favorite traditional Thanksgiving dishes.

Around 7 pm we realized if we paddled another 11 or 12 miles we could make it to a small town with a hotel. We have only stayed in a hotel twice on this journey, but the camping options didn’t look promising and it was Thanksgiving, so we decided it was the best option, so we called the hotel.

They were a little surprised when I explained we would arrive by canoe, but had plenty of rooms available, said we could lock our canoe in the parking lot and they would keep an eye on it with their security cameras.

It felt good to know we had a good place to sleep for the night. We could relax and enjoy our last 3 hours on the water. The wind and waves started to build as we approached our take out, but at 11:30 PM we wheeled Sig up to the Sleep Inn and checked into the hotel, flopped into bed.

It was certainly not a typical way to spend Thanksgiving, but it is certainly one that we will remember!