The Urban River Showdown

Back in the Spring I posted our thoughts comparing the Boise River Greenbelt to Philadelphia's Schuylkill River Trail. For those keeping score, the Greenbelt won. Frankly, wasn't even close.  As a hot-weather continuation of that comparison, I give you: The Urban River Showdown.

Last weekend, in hopes of briefly escaping the brutal humidity and heat that seems to be a hallmark of the East Coast summer (How the heck did I tolerate this for the first 30+ years of my life?!?  Didn't know any better, I guess.) Tina and I rented a hard-shell tandem kayak for a 6mi cruise down the Brandywine River.

The section that we kayaked of the Brandywine, which runs through southeastern PA and meets the Delaware River in Wilmington DE, is more like the section of the Boise from downtown to Eagle, which T and I ran several times with Fritz Hummel. Mostly forested, occasionally paralleled by trails and intersected by bridges, but not traversing a truly built-up urban area. The River itself, while less clean than the Boise, is more like it than not - averages probably 100 feet wide with a mostly rocky bottom, a few mostly gentle curves and "rapids."

Near the end of the float

Unfortunately for us, there's no dam regularly releasing into the Brandywine, so water levels were low - VERY low in many spots. We got plenty of opportunities to practice a trick Fritz taught us - raising our butts off the bottom of the boat so it didn't scrape. Even that didn't work several times and I was forced to drag the boat through ankle-deep water (and no, it wasn't that I was out of the channel on a bar - there WAS no channel). Too, the Brandywine's drop must be negligible, because the tube-floaters we saw were barely moving. The Brandywine reminded us more in many spots of a still pond than a flowing river.

One check in the Brandywine's column, though, was the water temperature, which was more like a swimming pool than the Boise typically is, especially in early summer. A couple of times when I floated or kayaked the Boise the water was painfully cold, which made for an interesting "frying pan or fire" choice - "do I stay in the sun, where it's 100+ degrees, or get in the water, where it's 50?..."

While it made for a pleasant day and perhaps isn't a fair comparison given the low water levels, Tina and I agree the Boise, either the "commercial" section east of town or the more "adventurous" section to the west, gets the decision this time.

Our first tandem trip: On the Boise River, 3 yrs ago today