Sunderland to Hatfield
The section of the Connecticut River from the Sunderland bridge down to the Hatfield boat ramp is a pretty monotonous one. The river there is broad and straight, with farm fields on either side, but what you can see is just a band of trees, with the occasional irrigation pipe coming out into the river. L. and I canoed it yesterday. The nice thing was that we had the river pretty much to ourselves for most of the trip. Power boats aren't supposed to travel on that section of the river. We didn't pass anyone until about four miles down, when a double kayak passed us heading up river from Hatfield.
We put in under the bridge at the boat ramp near the Sunderland library and left our second car down at the Hatfield boat ramp, about 1.4 mi. north of the center of town, near the water treatment plant. The vista right when we put in was very nice, with South Sugarloaf looming above the bridge, but we quickly put that behind us and headed down a long straightaway. It was nice to be out on the river and paddling, a chance to think and to talk. But there wasn't much to see. We passed under some power lines, but that was pretty much it for several miles. No bridges, no turns, no reeds with wading birds. Between South Sugarloaf and Mount Warner in Hadley, there's little to no topography to look at.
After three or four miles, we came upon some islands in the water. They're probably nothing but sand bars when the river is high, but they were islands when we passed them. On one of them, there were four or five guys pitching horseshoes. That was interesting. For most of the stretch, the wind was behind us and the paddling was easy. But after we passed the islands, we came to a turn when the wind was blowing in our face and we had the darnedest time trying to zig zag into the wind and keep a course down stream. But after a hundred yards or two, we went through another turn and did okay. We were looking around for the boat ramp at that point in time. We had crossed the buoys that indicated that we were out of the no-power-boats zone and came across a couple of pontoon boats. Shortly afterwards, we found the boat ramp and pulled out. The little pamphlet we had said it was a five mile paddle. It took us an hour and a half to two hours.
L. and I have been slowly making our way south down the river. After this trip, we've seen the river from Vernon, Vermont, to Hatfield. The next stretch is from Hatfield to Northampton. I have this idea that we'll eventually make it down to Springfield. It'd also be nice to canoe the river up in the Vermont-New Hampshire section. Oh, it's nice to have a canoe.