Cheoah Motor Home Trip

[SwmmrGreg]

Hit the road this past Friday for a trip to catch the scheduled Cheoah release and got to do it a bit more luxuriously than I'm used to. Met my fellow "glamping" travelers, Dzielak and Hood, in South Hill on 85 Fri morn. Transferred gear and we were off with the hope of catching a lap on Wilsons Creek on the way down and fears that the Cheoah camping would be crowded and not MH friendly.

The lap on Wilson's went off without a hiccup. Perfect warm, sunny skies, and not quite -3 on the bridge gauge. We rolled with admiring stares of our LARGE shuttle vehicle and continued our journey further south. A small backwards detour for pie from Standard Pizza in Asheville got us in after dark for camp setup and a meet with John Hayes. We lucked out with a perfect lake view site for the motor home and were setup for our weekend of boating in no time.

Sat morning arrived sunny and beautiful and after a gourmet breakfast it was Cheoah time.
We met up with Tristan and Raymond who had graciously brought a new boat for Dzielak to replace one that had been stolen from the roof of his car last spring during a Cranberry trip.
Saturdays Cheoah's release was fluffy, somewhere in the 900+ cfs, and a near perfect temp was enjoyed. A few of us ran a second meat lap and during this I experienced a small out of boat experience after flushing under a log. A quick self rescue and we finished with a whole sunny afternoon to enjoy. Dinner was grilled sausages with onions and peppers and strawberry pie for dessert.

Sunday dawned with another scrumptious breakfast and the not so promising sounding planned release of only 350 cfs. Luckily there was some natural flow and we ended up with something closer to 650 cfs. Four of us plus a local looking for a group to hang with had the river to ourselves. We ran from the new rafters put in to the lake and had fun catching microeddies and boofing anything we could find. I believe we started our return trip about noon and with the obligatory DQ stop and Mexican for dinner I was home by 11:30.

Thanks Coastals