[Rhodes22-list] Platte River Canoe Trip

[Roger Pihlaja]

Hi Everybody,

I just got back from a weekend canoe trip on the Platte River with the Venture Scout Unit that my two sons belong to.  Venturing is a facet of the Boy Scouting program; that, is open to older Scouts, ages 14 to 21.  The BSA Venturing program is also coed.  We had 12 people on this canoe trip; 3 adult leaders, 2 girls, & 7 boys.  The 2 girls were both new to the Venturing program & neither had any canoeing experience.

The Platte River flows thru Benzie County in the NW lower peninsula of Michigan.  It's about a 2 hour drive from my house in Sanford, MI.  We drove up on Friday afternoon & set up our base camp in the Platte River State Forest Campground on Goose Road just off of US-31, about 2-1/2 miles SE of Honor, MI.  On Saturday morning, we shuttled 2 vehicles & the canoe trailer to a public launch ramp right at the mouth of the Platte River on Lake Michigan within the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes National Lakeshore.  We launched right from our basecamp & paddled about 15 river miles to Lake Michigan.  The temperature was in the upper 50's deg F & it was kind of foggy when we launched about 10:00 AM.

The 1st 7 - 8 river miles of the upper Platte River are fairly challenging, with several class I - II rapids and lots of stumps, hydraulics, strainers, sand bars, & rock gardens to navigate.  I paddled with one of the new girl Venture Scouts, named Christy.  Saturday was Christy's 16th birthday.  I put her in the bow of our canoe.  Since Christy had recently gotten her driver's license, I asked her if she was familiar with "commentary drive" from her driver's ed classes.  It turned out she was & we kept up a constant conversation about the river in front of us & what we needed to do in order to safely navigate the hazards.  We got stuck a couple of times; but, we never dumped.  Christy picked up reading white water pretty quickly & by the end of the upper Platte River section, was handling her end of the canoe pretty capably.  When the river current slowed down where the Platte River enters Platte Lake, we stopped & waited for the rest of the group.  Some of them were 5 minutes behind us.

My 2 sons, Daniel & Gary, opted to run the river in their kayaks.  Even the upper Platte River wasn't much of a challenge for them & they spent most of their time zooming around among the canoes trying trick maneuvers & squirting everyone with their kayak bilge pumps.

The rest of the trip to Lake Michigan included 3 miles of slack water paddling across Platte Lake & another mile of slack water across Loon Lake with several miles of slow moving river in between.  The lower Platte River is very popular with canoe renters & float tubes & we started running into swarms of them.  Here, the challenge was to safely navigate around them without running into anyone.  The whole trip from our base camp to Lake Michigan took about 5-1/2 hours.

At the mouth of the Platte River, we spent a couple of hours playing in Lake Michigan & enjoying the pristine sandy beach within sight of the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes.  By the time we got there in the afternoon, the temperature was in the upper 80's deg F & the sun was blazing.  We loaded up the canoes & got back to base camp by about 5:30 PM.  After dinner, we celebrated Christy's birthday with a cake.

Saturday night, it started thunderstorming about 3:00 AM & kept raining hard right up thru when we broke camp & left about 10:30 AM on Sunday morning.  I have a pile of soaking wet camping gear drying in my basement right now!

It was a pretty good trip.  I'd do this one again.

Roger Pihlaja
S/V Dynamic Equilibrium