Canoe Trip Through the Trough

The South Branch of the Potomac is only a few miles from us and offers some neat recreation and sight seeing. This post includes some pictures of an area of the river known as "The Trough". It's about 3 1/2 miles lone and has relatively steep and high (for east coast mountains) on both sides. No roads through the area and you access by floating through on canoes or on a train that passes through. Will put up a separate post for the train trip but if you're in the area, the train or canoe can be a lot of fun.

These pictures are from last July when my sister Patti and BIL Mark made a trip through the area. We had a great visit and nice float through the canyon. We rented canoes from the Trough General store and as part of their package, they take you about 4 miles down river with your canoes. You then float at your own pace back towards the store and land there. Took about 4 hours and we saw all kinds of weather- nice and sunny when we started, had a pouring rain storm that we could see following us up the river, and then back to warm again. We were on a week day and didn't see anyone else on the water while we made our way.

We did see some local wildlife, pictures aren't as good as we hoped but got a few shots. The big draw is to see bald eagles that live and next in the area. They say that you have 95% chance of seeing eagles as you go through. We were lucky because a train came through and caused a couple of the eagles to fly out over the river. Here are some shots of the trip/area.

Donna Leading the Way!

 Here's Donna leading the party as we're starting out. You can see how slow the water runs at many points to make this a nice and easy trip. No whitewater to deal with although there were a few spots where because of low water, we had to get out and float the canoe through some ankle deep water.

Dave supervising the trip

The second picture is looking back up towards the launching point.












Next is a shot of Patti and Mark as they make their way through an area of low water.

Patti and Mark through the rapids

Heron looking us over

Heron on his way

 The next picture shows a Heron we saw that was standing on the rocks as we went by. He was obviously not interested and took off over the river so I was able to get a picture of him flying.

Freight train startles the eagles

This picture shows a freight train as it came through the trough, you can click on the pictures to enlarge them. The last shot shows an eagle that took off from one of the trees that was near the train. I'll post some better shots of the eagle in a post about the train trip we took through the trough but did get at least this one.

A great day and lots of fun.

Eagle flying overhead