Friday I picked Skip up at 2pm and we drove to Piseco to put in on Fall Stream for an overnight camping trip. I had heard there were issues with leaving cars overnight at the put in and so left my car at Piseco Airport located about .5 from the put in. I know one person in Piseco and he drove by as I was walking back to the canoe. He was accompanied by his two schnauzer dogs and our chat was brief.
We were on the water at 3:30 and at Fall Lake 30 minutes later. We had several rain showers as we paddled. I donned my rain coat for the 1st hard down pour, but embraced the cooling showers thereafter. There was only one hard rain that caused us to pull under a hemlock tree for a little protection.Above Fall Lake we encountered a few beaver dams that required exiting the canoe and lifting over. The photo below looks SW and depicts the relationship of Piseco Lake in the background, the airport on the right with Fall Lake in the foreground and Fall Stream draining towards Piseco Lake.
We arrived at Vly Lake at 5pm and surveyed the two campsites along the north side of Vly Mtn. Both had a nice view of the lake, but were markedly different. The eastern most campsite had a fireplace and two areas cleared and leveled to accommodate solo tents. Unfortunately, i had brought my Big Agnes Emerald Mtn 3 person trip on it’s maiden voyage and needed more space.
The western most campsite had been “improved”. It had a an old canvas chair, a gas barbecue grill sans the gas tank, two flag poles, a half buried 5 gallon bucket (clean and 1/3 full of water), and a lot of garbage.
The last residents had left a smoldering fire and left toilet flowers all over the woods. They had cut a large spruce tree off at 4′ that was apparently obscuring their view and dropped it into the lake. They dumped crackers on the ground, burned their cans in the fire and dumped beans on the ground. We ended up taking 2 bags of trash out with us on Saturday.
All this aside, Vly Lake was beautiful. It was hot, hazy and still as the sun set and the bugs (mosquitoes, deer flies and gnats) were swarming. Skip went swimming while I cooked dinner: corn bread using my Outback Oven and Spanish Rice with tomatoes, onions, peppers and hamburger. Dinner was one of my better meals.
While Skip washed dishes I went swimming and washed off the sweat, sun screen and bug dope. Although it was a full moon and bright the overcast kept the moon from being seen by us. We turned in at 10pm.
One nice feature of the Big Agnes Emerald Mtn 3 is the amount of mesh on the tent. We slept with the sides open and had a nice cross breeze through the night despite recurring light rain sprinkles. During the night we heard a owl close overhead.
We awoke at 7. Within minutes after arising we could hear rain coming across the adjoining woods and across the lake. We packed the tent in a hurry and donned our rain coats. 10 minutes later the rain passed and we had coffee and breakfast.
At 8pm we paddled over to explore Mud Lake which was interesting, but didn’t offer any opportunities to exit a boat.
Our paddle out was uneventful. We arrived back in Piseco in time for me to walk into the airport along with the finishers of the Piseco Triathlon. Once loaded up Skip & I did a scouting trip on nearby Fawn Lake and returned home.