Reservations for 12

Well here's something new and different.    Real, honest-to-goodness permission from a landowner to camp on his property the first night!

I know this is not something you're accustomed to, and the contradiction in his signature line may set off some alarms, but I feel sure this will hold up in court.   Which is probably where we'll find ourselves after our open and obvious trespassing the second night.   Now the whole trip has taken shape, though. 

The "sand bar" he is talking about is marked on the map below, so this is night #1:

As you can see, it's very close to our put-in at Cortner Mill - about one mile, which is like thirty minutes of paddling.  We have to be off the mill property (i.e. shoved off downstream) by 2:00 because of an event they have that afternoon which means two things:  (1) we might need to meet at Dickel a little before noon because of unloading and shuttle time and (2) we are guaranteed to get to our campsite early.

For night #2, there is one, big beautiful gravel bar about 4.5 miles down from our first camp.  Which is also an extremly short paddle considering we have all day to do it.   It's right where Garrison Fork enters the Duck.   Garrison Fork is an unusually large tributary, almost as big as the Duck River itself at that point.

The only drawback:   there is a fishing camp set up there, in the field above the gravel bar, and we most definitely do not have landowner permission.  The good news is there is no house in sight.   At the cook's meeting earlier this week we discussed this and decided (or the Guiness decided) that if nobody is there when we arrive, it is extremely unlikely they will show up later.  Because when people use those weekend set-ups they're usually there for the whole day, plus it's going to be a Sunday night which also improves our odds.   If we lose our courage, or if the landowners are present, there are a couple of small islands about a mile down that we can use.  

So let's have a vote.  All those in favor of camping at Garrison Fork...post a comment about how you like the magnificent content of this blog and invite us to view your website.