French Creek

           A young George Washington named the stream "French Creek" in 1753 when he canoed upriver to warn the French at Fort Le Boeuf---present day Waterford, PA---that they were trespassing on British territory. Actually, he didn't care so much about British interests; he was claiming the so-called "Ohio Country" for Virginia.  Enlist the great Washington into your patriotic rhetoric however you like, but he remained an old Tidewater aristocrat who would have had little patience with his modern-day devotees.  And his primary commitment was never to America, but to Virginia.

          Washington's mission was a resounding failure.  But my own paddle against the current of French Creek was fantastic.  It's the perfect stream for paddling: deep, still, and little-traveled.  In many western states, it might qualify as a river instead of a creek.  But though it's a large and navigable body of water, it only travels 117 miles, meandering lazily from Chautauqua County, New York, to Franklin, PA, where it empties into the Allegheny River.  (There are blog entries about both those places below.)

          I saw some beautiful wildlife.  A majestic blue heron, a turtle, a red tail hawk, and many birds and fish.  As always, it's the domestic animals whose presence I didn't particularly enjoy.  The top photo is a sandy beach where I stopped to rest my shoulders.  As I was wading out into the water, I thought to myself, "This place smells like horses, and there are hoof-prints in the sand."  At that moment, I heard galloping, and a herd of horses came bounding into the water.  I'm scared of horses, and you never saw a guy scramble so fast to get into his kayak and push out into midstream.  In the lower photo, you can barely see the horses standing at the water's edge.  It's a bad picture because I wasn't about to turn around and fumble with my camera until I got way, way away from those beasts...