After-Thanksgiving Weekend Lumber River Canoe Camp

Laziness is habit forming. First I plagiarized (maybe it isn't plagiarizing if you give credit to the author?) Andy's report on the Morrow Mountain hike. Then Wayne wrote an excellent report on our Thanksgiving canoe camping trip on the Lumber River, so I am repeating it here. I will agree with Wayne: it was Almost Perfect!

Almost Perfect! This description is one that I use for our annual after-Thanksgiving canoe camping trip that Lynda and I (Wayne Charles) did, along with Myron & Dorcas Whitley, on 11-23 to 11-25- 07. The 36.1 miles of the Lumber River from Boardman, NC to Rice Cove Landing below Nichols, SC was almost perfect. The river was 50-100' wide and very clear with a good current. There were no portages or pullovers and around every bend there was a beautiful white sandbar that was almost perfect for camping. The weather was cool but not cold, almost perfect for a early winter camping trip. At the put in there was another group of campers starting their trip (they were not carrying gear, and told us that they were camping at the Princess Anne campgrounds). We visited with park superintendent Neil Lee for a few minutes near the Pea Ridge rest area a few miles below the put in. Other than at Princess Anne we would see no one else on the entire trip. Almost Perfect! We made camp at around 4:00 PM on a sand bar a few miles below Princess Anne. We had steaks for supper. There was a full moon and the river was very pretty in the moonlight. Almost Perfect! We arose with the sun and had omelets and grits with bacon and coffee. We went by Fair Bluff at 2:00, and by the marker separating NC and SC at 3:00 and made camp on a large white sandbar a little after 4:00 PM. Since South Carolina doesn't have a fire ban at this time we built a nice campfire. We solved all of the world's problems while roasting marshmallows and catching up on our adventures with the Whitley's. Almost perfect! We all had a good night sleep in the cool weather and again rose with the sun, (O.K. it was cloudy, but still almost perfect). We took out at Rice Cove Landing at 2:30. We saw deer, otter, turkeys and hundreds of ducks. All in all, an ALMOST PERFECT TRIP.