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Advanced Kayaking on the Lower Columbia River

Program Number: 19493RJ
Start and End Dates:
5/26/2013 - 5/31/2013;
Duration: 5 nights
Location: Skamokawa, Washington
Price starting at: $799.00 - Price may vary based on date, departure city
Program Type: Water Sports Activity Level: n (see description)
Meals: 14; 5 Breakfasts, 4 Lunches, 5 Dinners    
Meal Options: Low Fat; Vegetarian; Low Salt    

Explore the Great River of the West with other experienced kayakers on a long-distance program that exposes you to little-traveled sections of the river. Paddle with expert guides who know the cultural and natural history of the Lower Columbia, opening a world of wildlife areas and geologic formations visible only from the water.




Highlights

• Paddle to Gray’s Point and back along a forested shoreline frequented by otters, bald eagles and Roosevelt elk.
• Spend a day practicing skills such as bracing, rescues, rolling and towing with coach Karl Andersson.
• Conclude with an epic 20-mile, tide-assisted paddle from Skamokawa through the islands of the Lewis &
Clark Refuge to Astoria.



Activity Particulars

Paddle 10-20 miles daily with tide. Experienced paddlers.




Date Specific Information

5-26-2013

Enjoy the latest in hearing technology — listening devices — on this date.



Coordinated by Columbia River Kayaking.




Skamokawa

Lewis and Clark paddled down the Lower Columbia River near this historic river town, situated where two national wildlife refuges meet. The village is a gateway to the explorers’ historic water trail and the surrounding landscape and wildlife habitat.
Accommodations
Participants will stay in one of two charming local Bed and Breakfasts. Participants will be assigned rooms based on availability.
Meals and Lodgings
   The Inn at Crippen Creek or The Inn at Lucky Mud
  Skamokawa, Washington 5 nights
 The Inn at Crippen Creek
Type: Bed and Breakfast
  Description: Set near the end of Skamokawa's Middle Valley, the Inn at Crippen Creek has a quiet setting surrounded by forested hills. A creek runs through the property, and guests who come in the fall may get the chance to see salmon spawning there. A large garden and a flock of chickens and ducks supply produce and eggs for your meals. Your gracious hosts teach cooking and baking classes when they aren't hosting Road Scholar, and you will appreciate their skills at every meal.
  Contact info: 15 Oatfield Road
Skamokawa, WA 98647 USA
phone: 360-795-0585
web: www.crippencreek.com
  Facility amenities: This newly built farmhouse is reminiscent of simpler times, with porches that beckon you to sit and invite you to linger. The great room offers an extensive library of books, music CD's, a piano, games, movies and a wood-burning fireplace.
  Smoking allowed: No

 The Inn at Lucky Mud
Type: Bed and Breakfast
  Description: Large guest rooms at the inn, each with a private bath. The inn has queen beds, interior and exterior secure entrances, and porches facing onto the terrace and the pond. The more economically-priced cottage is set on the hill above the inn at the edge of the forest. Lovingly built with hand tools in the 1970's, it features one double room with a queen bed and two single rooms in the upstairs loft. All those staying in the cottage share one bathroom. For photos and descriptions of the inn and cottage see www.luckymud.com .
  Contact info: 44 Old Chestnut Drive
Skamokawa, WA 98647 USA
phone: 800-806-7131
web: www.luckymud.com
  Room amenities: The living room has a large bay window, fireplace, and a piano for those who play. Downstairs is a common area for entertainment; it includes a small kitchen, comfortable chairs and a library of books. This room, too, has its own entrance onto the pond.
  Facility amenities: You are welcome to enjoy the serenity around our lodging, play on the competition disc (frisbee) golf course or walk the forested trails.
  Smoking allowed: No
  Bathroom: All bathrooms at the Inn are private; up to four persons may share the one bathroom in the cottage.


Travel Details
  Start of Program:
Check in at B&B from 3:00-5:00 pm. You will be staying at The Inn at Crippen Creek or The Inn at Lucky Mud that night.
  End of Program:
Program ends after 8:00 A.M. breakfast on final day. Checkout time is at 10:00 A.M. of final day. You will be staying at The Inn at Crippen Creek or The Inn at Lucky Mud the night before.
  Required documents:
The Road Scholar Health & Safety Form is required.
  Parking availability:
Free parking on site.
Transportation
To Start of Program
  Location:  Skamokawa, Washington
  Nearest highway: Washington State Route 4
  Nearest airport:  Portland International Airport (PDX)
  From End of Program
  Location: Skamokawa, Washington
    (Additional transportation information same as above)
Travel Details
 

Portland, OR

 

From Airport

 
 

Service:

 

Commercial Van/Shuttle
Alex Vegvary, Columbia River Kayaking
phone: 360-795-0882
Advanced Reservations Required

 

Per Person/One Way:

 

$75 per person one way
Prices are subject to change.
 

Travel Time:

 

One hour and 45 minutes 
 

Distance:

 

87 miles
   

Shuttles at the end of the program can be arranged during the program.
 

Kelso, WA

 

From Train Station

 
 

Service:

 

Commercial Van/Shuttle
Alex Vegvary, Columbia River Kayaking
phone: 360-795-0882
Advanced Reservations Required

 

Per Person/One Way:

 

$40 per person one way
Prices are subject to change.
 

Travel Time:

 

One 
 

Distance:

 

39 miles
   

Shuttles at the end of the program can be reserved during the program.

 
Driving Directions
  I-5 from Portland or Seattle Going north on I-5 (from Portland), take exit 36 toward Kelso/Longview. About 2 miles after taking the exit, take the exit marked 3rd Ave./Industrial area. You will come immediately to a light. Take a left at the light onto 432 west. Continue for 8 miles until it ends at State Route 4. Turn left onto State Route 4 and follow for about 29 miles to Skamokawa. Going south on I-5 (from Seattle), take exit 40 toward Kelso/Longview. Follow the signs to WA-4 / Ocean Beach Highway. Once on Ocean Beach Highway, drive 35 miles until you reach the town of Skamokawa. Once you are in Skamokawa, take a right onto East Valley Rd. It is the first right after entering town. If you drive over the bridge over Skamokawa Creek, you've gone too far. Skamokawa Valley Rd. forks into Middle Valley Rd. and East Valley Rd. after 1.2 miles. For the Inn at Lucky Mud, keep right and continue on East Valley Rd. Follow East Valley Rd., watching for the mile markers. The inn is 1/4 mile past mile marker 6. You will see a sign that says "The Inn At Lucky Mud." Turn left into the driveway. Go to the top of the hill. The inn is the first house you will see on your right. Phone for Inn at Lucky Mud: 360-795-8770. Do not try to use GPS to get to Lucky Mud. GPS navigation is unreliable out here. For the Inn at Crippen Creek: Follow the directions above until the fork of Middle Valley and East Valley Roads. Take the left fork, Middle Valley Road. Continue for about 3 miles. The road will take a sharp right and go over a small bridge, where it becomes Oatfield Road. There will be a straight stretch of road before the road winds up the hill. Near the end of the straight stretch there is a white sign for the Inn on your left. Turn left into the driveway at 15 Oatfield Rd. If you use GPS instead of these directions, say "Hello" to the family of your kayak guide Andrew, as you will end up at their farm at the end of the valley, half a mile beyond the Inn. Phone for Crippen Creek: 360-795-0585.
The prices listed for commercial services and facilities that are not included in the program cost, such as airport shuttles or extra nights lodging, are subject to change without notice. Since Road Scholar cannot guarantee the accuracy of these prices, we strongly suggest contacting the companies directly for the most up-to-date information.


Daily Schedule

Day 1: Arrival & Check-in, Registration & Orientation, Introductions & Getting to Know You, Introduction to History of Skamokawa
(Sunday, May 26)
   
 Arrive To: Check in at Inn at Lucky Mud or Inn at Crippen Creek between 3:00 and 5:00 pm. There will be a social hour at the Inn at Lucky Mud at 5:00. Orientation and a Lower Columbia history presentation will follow dinner.
 Dinner: Dinner at the Inn at Lucky Mud. Menus typically include a salad, entrée, fresh homemade bread, and dessert, often featuring fresh, local ingredients.
 Evening: ORIENTATION: This new program takes you to explore the Great River of the West with other experienced kayakers on a long-distance program that exposes you to little-traveled sections of the river. You'll have an overview of the experience to come plus an opportunity to meet the program staff and your fellow participants during an introductory session.

PRESENTATION: After a short break, we'll have a slide presentation introducing the history of Skamokawa and the lower Columbia River by guide Andrew Emlen. Andrew has taught a course on the Columbia River as adjunct faculty for Lewis & Clark College.

Note: This program is designed for experienced paddlers to learn advanced skills; no beginners. Paddling 10–20 tide-assisted miles per day.
   
Accommodations: The Inn at Crippen Creek or The Inn at Lucky Mud
Meals Included: Dinner

Day 2: Paddle from Deep River to Gray's Point & back, evening presentation by historian Irene Martin
(Monday, May 27)
   
 Breakfast: The hearty and varied breakfast at your B&B includes choices such as cereal, sausage, fresh fruit, juices, homemade bread, and farm fresh eggs.
 Morning: FIELD TRIP: We will begin paddling in Deep River and emerge onto Gray's Bay, the widest point of the Columbia River at eight miles across. Gray's Bay is usually our best area for seeing wildlife, including river otters, elk, waterfowl and nesting bald eagles.

Note: The “field trip” designation denotes a group outing that includes on-site presentations by experts.

 Lunch: We will eat our pack lunches at forested Gray's Point, where Lewis & Clark camped for two stormy days in 1805.
 Afternoon: FIELD TRIP: After the tide changes during lunch, we will return along the shore of Gray's Bay, passing the ghost town of Frankfurt on our way back to our Deep River launch site.
 Dinner: We will eat together at the Inn at Crippen Creek. Our hosts the Speranzas, are former caterers who teach cooking classes specializing in Italian food.
 Evening: EVENING PROGRAM: Irene Martin is a local author and historian. Winner of the Governor's Award for her historical work, she has also worked as a gillnetter and Episcopal priest and has entertained and informed Road Scholar groups for many years on every conceivable topic related to the Lower Columbia River.
   
Accommodations: The Inn at Crippen Creek or The Inn at Lucky Mud
Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Day 3: Clinic of intermediate to advanced kayak skills with coach Mark Whitaker, River Life Interpretive Center, live folk music of the Columbia River
(Tuesday, May 28)
   
 Breakfast: The hearty and varied breakfast at your B&B includes choices such as cereal, sausage, fresh fruit, juices, homemade bread, and farm fresh eggs.

Before we leave for the morning, prepare your own pack lunch from a variety of fresh ingredients provided by the B&B.

 Morning: SKILLS CLINIC: Led by respected kayak coach Mark Whitaker, we'll work on stroke refinement, bracing, rescues, rolling, towing, and navigation.
 Lunch: We will eat our pack lunches on the deck of Skamokawa Center, overlooking the river.
 Afternoon: SKILLS CLINIC: We will continue our clinic, learning and practicing to improve kayaking skills.

EXCURSION: After the skills clinic concludes, we'll walk across the road to the River Life Interpretive Center. This Queen Anne-style 1894 schoolhouse was purchased and beautifully restored by the Friends of Skamokawa Foundation in 1985, and now serves as a historical museum.

 Dinner: We will have dinner together at the Inn at Lucky Mud.
 Evening: EVENING ENTERTAINMENT: The popular local folk band Willapa Hills will present a program of songs by and about the people of the lower Columbia River. Willapa Hills are known for creative arrangements using various combinations of voice, guitar, autoharp, cello, banjo, mandolin, mandocello, fiddle, piano and percussion.
   
Accommodations: The Inn at Crippen Creek or The Inn at Lucky Mud
Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Day 4: Paddle Eagle Cliff to Skamokawa via the Lower Gorge and the Julia Butler Hansen National Wildlife Refuge, evening presentation on the history of kayaking by Mark Whitaker.
(Wednesday, May 29)
   
 Breakfast: The hearty and varied breakfast at your B&B includes choices such as cereal, sausage, fresh fruit, juices, homemade bread, and farm fresh eggs.

Before we leave for the morning, prepare your own pack lunch from a variety of fresh ingredients provided by the B&B.

 Morning: FIELD TRIP: Beginning at County Line Park, we will paddle along the basalt cliffs of the Lower Gorge, featuring 90-foot waterfalls, many wildflowers, and the ruins of old salmon canneries. These cliffs are part of the world's second largest basalt flows that filled the Columbia 16 million years ago.
 Lunch: We will eat our pack lunch on an uninhabited island in the Columbia before continuing down river.
 Afternoon: FIELD TRIP: We continue paddling to Skamokawa through the Julia Butler Hansen National Wildlife Refuge. The Sitka spruce swamp sloughs through which we'll paddle are lined with trees up to 350 years old. We'll have opportunities to watch river otters, bald eagles, and nesting osprey.
 Dinner: We will have dinner together at the Inn at Lucky Mud.
 Evening: Evening presentation: Guide Mark Whitaker will give a history of kayaking, with an emphasis on the Aleut and Greenland cultures where the kayak developed. Mark has built traditional skin-on-frame kayaks and associated equipment and teaches traditional Greenland paddling and rolling techniques.
   
Accommodations: The Inn at Crippen Creek or The Inn at Lucky Mud
Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Day 5: Twenty-mile tide-assisted paddle from Skamokawa to Astoria via the islands of the Lewis & Clark National Wildlife Refuge, live Music of the Lewis & Clark Era
(Thursday, May 30)
   
 Breakfast: The hearty and varied breakfast at your B&B includes choices such as cereal, sausage, fresh fruit, juices, homemade bread, and farm fresh eggs.

Before we leave for the morning, prepare your own pack lunch from a variety of fresh ingredients provided by the B&B.

 Morning: FIELD TRIP: Our route this morning will begin along the rugged north shore to Pillar Rock, a landmark made famous in the Lewis & Clark journals as the point where they first reported seeing the ocean. We will then cross the main channel of the river where Lewis & Clark did, to the Oregon side.
 Lunch: We will eat our pack lunch on one of the islands of the Lewis & Clark National Wildlife Refuge.
 Afternoon: FIELD TRIP: We will continue through the islands until we cross to Astoria, where we will be greeted by a chorus of barking Calfornia sea lions at the East Mooring Basin.
 Dinner: Our final dinner usually features wild-caught salmon at the Inn at Lucky Mud.
 Evening: EVENING ENTERTAINMENT: Musicians Emlen & Reynolds will present "Corelli to Cruzatte: Music of the Lewis & Clark Era." The first half of this performance will be classical music once performed by Thomas Jefferson; the second half will be traditional fiddle tunes and folk songs that are likely to have been played on the Lewis & Clark trail. Emlen & Reynolds have performed for numerous state and national Lewis & Clark bicentennial events, historical societies, and Road Scholar programs and have been videotaped for the National Park Service archives.
   
Accommodations: The Inn at Crippen Creek or The Inn at Lucky Mud
Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Day 6: Farewells and Program Conclusion
(Friday, May 31)
   
 Breakfast: The hearty and varied breakfast at your B&B includes choices such as cereal, sausage, fresh fruit, juices, homemade bread, and farm fresh eggs.
 Morning: The program concludes with breakfast and farewells so that everyone can begin their independent departures.

We trust you have enjoyed this exciting new program and will join us in the future for other rewarding Road Scholar learning adventures. Best wishes for all your journeys!
   
Meals Included: Breakfast
Important information about your itinerary: Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy and completeness of the information featured on this website. Itineraries are based on our best information at this time. Circumstances beyond our control may require us to adjust itineraries or other details. We regret any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your understanding. Information will be sent to you from your Program Provider approximately three weeks prior to the program start date. The prices listed for commercial services and facilities that are not included in the program cost, such as airport shuttles or extra nights lodging, are subject to change without notice. Since Road Scholar cannot guarantee the accuracy of these prices, we strongly suggest contacting the companies directly for the most up-to-date information.

Suggested Reading List


Beach of Heaven: A History of Wahkiakum County


Author: Irene Martin


Description: Local historian, gill-netter and Episcopal priest, Irene Martin has won a Governor's Heritage Award for her books on local history. She lives in Skamokawa and will be an evening program presenter for our Road Scholar program.



Naked Against the Rain: The People of the Lower Columbia 1770-1830


Author: Rick Rubin


Description: This book is hard to find, but it is an excellent account of the Chinookan peoples native to the lower Columbia River.



Northwest Passage: the Great Columbia River


Author: William Dietrich


Description: Possibly the most comprehensive of the histories of the Columbia, broad in scope, thoughtful and thought-provoking.



Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast: Washington, Oregon, British Columbia and Alaska


Author: Jim Pojar and Andy MacKinnon


Description: This is the best plant guide for our area. Organized by family, it has good photographs and drawings and rewards identification of each plant with a wealth of ecological information and notes on human uses.



River of the West: Stories from the Columbia


Author: Robert Clark


Description: This beautifully written book tells the story of the Columbia through the individual stories of its inhabitants, from Native Americans early and modern, explorers, missionaries, emigrants, fishermen and those seeking new lives during the dam-building era.



Seeking Western Waters: The Lewis & Clark Trail for the Rockies to the Pacific


Author: Emory and Ruth Strong


Description: These authors have done something unique. For each day of the expedition’s travel in the Columbia River watershed, they provide a journal excerpt, explanatory text, and a photograph. Nearly every page provides a photo of an artifact, landscape, plant or animal described in the journals of Lewis and Clark.



Sky Time in Gray's River: Living for Keeps in a Forgotten Place


Author: Robert Michael Pyle


Description: Bob Pyle, a winner of the John Burroughs award for natural history (for Wintergreen), here has written what Kathleen Dean Moore best described as “a lovingly rendered ecology of people in their home place”, just west of Skamokawa in Gray’s River.



Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West


Author: Stephen E. Ambrose


Description: This biography of Meriwether Lewis is the book that rekindled interest in the Lewis & Clark expedition, a bestseller with footnotes. Don’t expect a great deal of information on the Columbia, however. A Montanan, Ambrose wrote twice as much text per mile on the Missouri River as he did on the Columbia. All the same, a nice complement to a week following Lewis & Clark’s trail along the lower Columbia.



Way to the Western Sea: Lewis & Clark Across the Continent


Author: David Lavender


Description: Looking for one short, readable book that tells the entire Lewis & Clark story? Lavender encapsulates it all, adding interesting background and context for the events of the expedition. This is the book I was handed by the staff of Fort Clatsop National Memorial when I began volunteering there in 1992.





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