Sunday, October 13, 2013

No River for Deep Drafts



The day looked promising as I approached Egg Rock this morning.  I guess my mistake was putting on a pair of sunglasses.  That was it, the sun soon disappeared and didn't come back... not even for a curtain call. 
At Egg Rock the inscription was high and dry...
...showing that water levels in the SuAsCo basin are very low.

While passing through the Leaning Hemlocks I encountered this small turtle...
It's a type of turtle I don't recall having seen before.  So far, I haven't had any luck in determining what kind of turtle it might be.

With such shallow conditions, getting upriver of Spencer Brook and the old Reformatory RR bridge location required rock dodging and some occasional sand paddling.

It was upriver of that location that an old six-sided bottle and a large turtle carapace (of a plastic variety) were found.  Both can be seen on the right side of my trash haul...

There were 24 recyclable containers (10 redeemable) and 24 pieces of miscellaneous rubbish such as bait tubs, plastic bags, etc. 
Oddly, the old six-sided bottle was found floating (neck up)...

 
...no markings on it other than a small embossed 4 near the base.
 

Yesterday at the Lowell Road Boat Launch a couple of folks signed the citizen's initiative petition to update the Massachusetts bottle bill.  A quick terrestrial patrol produced 20 pieces of trash, some of which were displayed as samples of non-carbonated versus carbonated beverage containers...
 
 ...bringing my YTD total to 5128
 
 
On this past sunny and warm Friday Mrs. Trashpaddler and I pedaled the Norwottuck Trail...
 
 
...Belchertown to the Connecticut River and back.  The trail was found to be clean as a whistle and we were surprised to see that this order board signal at the Amherst depot still remains...



1 comment:

Erik Eckilson said...

Ain't that the truth - I did some sand paddling myself on the Blackstone last weekend. Actually it was muck paddling...