This joint CCA-Loudoun Kayakers trip went to the newly established Swains Lock Loop, only starting at Virginia's Riverbend Park rather than Swains - to accommodate our majority of Loudoun Kayakers. The paddle took longer than expected, as those people are not the nose-to-the-grindstone kind of paddlers our more formal band prides itself on being. Instead of 2.5 hours that the tiny CCA trip that three of us I had run two weeks ago, this one took 4.5 hours. We had 12 paddlers and stopped off at the Great Falls Tavern and at Swains, where a mother and her two daughters had set up shop beside the towpath, selling big droopy cookies to the many passers by.
A certain amount of levity crept in with all manner of Halloween costumes: we had a pirate, complete with parrot and Jolly Roger, two horned Norsemen, a flower-head, a wicked witch, and several more. We had mainly sea kayaks and rec boats, two of us had whitewater boats, one had a heavy duty fold-up Oru-kayak sort of boat called a "Tucktec," which would survive even in whitewater. And there was a paddleboard that was paddled seated (thank fortune, for the water level at 2.8 feet can be shallow and therefore challenging for standees). I was the only person with a helmet. Old habits die hard.
At Lock 20, we looked at the Aqueduct Dam, visited the small museum at the Tavern, and held a mini-course - Canal Sciences 101 - to impart knowledge of Lock Gates. We rehearsed bicycle avoidance on the towpath, and checked how a narrow-ended rec kayak responds to making a seal launch into the Canal !
Besides myself and co-leader Jim Byrne, the CCA members were Francois Krodel and Hildy Ferraiolo. All seemed to enjoy the circuit - a pity that the NHP's impending draining of the Canal will make it impossible to run this trip for two years.