We started with four end and ended with 6. The level was 3.66 just perfect. We had four paddlers to start with on a glorious sunny warm day (after so many dank rainy days): K1s Gus Anderson, Barb Brown, OC1 Larry Lempert and yours truly. One other paddler was planning to join us but he had had his flu shot the day before and that had knocked him off kilter. We took off down river and had plenty of surfing at Offutt and Yellow Falls. While at Yellow Falls I was looking upstream and thought “We have the river to ourself. No Calleva Classes, no Rescue Boats etc.”. Then I spotted a fellow solo paddling a Tripper 2. We had seen him at the Anglers parking lot. PFD but no helmet or floatation. He made it through albeit a bit wobbly and with some gunwale grabbing. He continued on. After much surfing, we continued on down river where Gus led the three surfers over to a small island near Carderock with a good surfing wave. No issues at Stubblefield. At the take out the mystery padder asked for a shuttle ride back up to which we assented to. Name of Jim. Had been a CCA member years ago. We invited him to the Sunday paddle at VL.
Afterwards we repaired to fish Taco where Gus told of us his many adventures on the Grand Canyon. That was appropriate because Jackie Hogland joined us and told us stories and jokes from her recent trip down the Grand Canyon, her fourth as it turns out.
A superb day.