We got up and had a nice breakfast, and got onto the river in canoes to look for our next picture. The picture from the book showed these sideways rocks jutting out of a mountain across the New River. Luckily, our guide knew exactly where it was!
Canoeing across the New River.
So we paddled across the river and walked up river a little bit, following the train tracks. And suddenly, around the bend came a train! It was REALLY LOUD.
The brain-rattling train.
It felt like my brain was rattling inside my head. Once it passed, we walked a little further down the tracks. We unloaded our stuff and went down the bank to the rivers edge. We moved around on the rocks lining up the rocks in the river, the mountain, the formation… and then we saw this large flat rock, the perfect place to set up an easel and sketch.
Exploring the riverside
We hopped over the the rock and, the picture and the image lined up perfectly!
Got it!
We snapped a photo and hurried back so we could find the rest of the river views before dark. We drove the boats over to where we camped and put in there. We slipped our boats into the river and off we paddled to find them! Only being on the river for a little bit, we saw one of the rock formations on our left. We realized that we could only get the view from the shore, and it was right by the road, so we paddled on, knowing we could find it the next morning.
Paddling down the river
We paddled down the slow and winding river, watching ducks and an occasional great blue herring fly out. We also saw many different rock formations that were not featured in the book. We saw lots of moths flying over the river. Sometimes when a moth fell into to water, a fish would come to the surface and devour it in a heartbeat. Eventually we came to Anvil Cliff. There were two views of it in the book, so we landed on the shore and looked around. In one of the photos, there was a sycamore tree that was in the foreground, and the cliff in the background. There were some enormous sycamore trees on the riverbank as well, and we looked at them wondering how old they were. Suddenly, we realized that one of the sycamore trees was the same tree from the engraving, more than 140 years ago! Some branches and limbs had broken off, but what used to a small limb on the tree was now a huge branch now! I’m guessing the tree was at least 20 years old in the engraving, so that would make the tree around 160 years old! We lined up the engraving to the tree (that had changed) and the cliff (that had barely changed).
Found it!
My dad climbed up part of the tree to make it look like the fisher in the old engraving too. We looked for the other view, and saw that we need to be on the other side of the river, and so we loaded back up into the canoes, and paddled across the river to find the right angle. We soon realized when we got to the shore we couldn’t go on the land because the undergrowth was too thick, and the trees would be blocking the view anyway.
Got it! Well, sorta.
Then it started to rain, so we decided to go down the river and get out of the dropping temperatures. As we paddled down river, we saw two large swans swimming. We drifted right by them. They were very beautiful and elegant birds.
Swans-a-swimming
We saw very large and loud flocks of birds all swarming into trees, making the river as loud as a busy street! Eventually we reached our take-out point. By then I was tired, hungry and cold. For dinner that evening we ate at a really neat local restaurant instead of cooking on our own – it was nice to be someplace warm and dry, and with good food! My Dad’s sleeve caught on fire a little bit because he reached over the candle! He quickly put it out, but it burned a hole in his raincoat. After dinner, we crashed after the long day of paddling.