Meeting 7:00 pm Sunday

Our first big pre-trip meeting is this Sunday at Ye Olde Meeting House established in 1927.

Agenda items:

1. Find a river with some water in it.

2. Find a menu we haven't cooked before and that can be prepared in 10 hours or less.

3. How much beer do we buy if Mike Delevante goes and how much do we buy if Mike backs out.

4. Mandolin tryouts for RRCC applicant Edwin M. Wilson, Jr. He must play a recognizable version of "Copperhead Road" and prove he owns a mandolin that will double as a paddle. Josh will provide the alt-country scream right after "I learned a thing or two from Charlie don't you know..."

5. Roster check and boat inventory. We do have the Vandy trailer this year, by the way.

6. Proposals for new merchandise: RRCC Custom Printed Matchboxes (minimum order is only 2,500) and branded pitchin' washers because we are "tired of spray painting rusty washers over and over again"...





Also, Bob, we need to get a waterproof transfer for this that will stick to the bow or stern of a canoe...

6. Financial report and collect dues. Remember, $200 first payment, $150 if you're a returning, dues-paying member.


7. Fill up our new RRCC ashtray on the eve of the "Tennessee Non-Smoker Protection Act". After 80 years (or 5,200 straight nights) of smoking at Brown's, Sunday will the last. We're going to beat The Record.

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411 on Yellow Creek

Yellow Creek in northern Houston County (NoHo?) is on the short list of river destinations for November.

First of all, it's got that frontier sound to it we like, reinforced by placenames along the way like "Bushwhacker Hollow" and "Opossum Creek"....





It is small and meandering and gorgeous, like a good creek ought to be...





The water is not yellow, it's crystal clear. The color of the gravel bottom through the clear water gives it its name...





You may recall we had to navigate around a dam on the Spring '04 trip (East Fork Stones River). Yellow Creek requires a short portage for the same reason but a different corps of engineers...








Normally a creek is a bad choice for floating during a drought and this one does require a lot of water on the upper stretches.




However (and the reason we're still considering it), Yellow Creek flows into the Cumberland River at an elevation that is still flooded by the Lake Barkley impoundment. That means it gets wider and deeper as you get farther downstream....





By the time you get to the take out...







...it's like you're going down the Ohio, the Cumberland, the Tennessee. Instead of all the rest of them dried up rebel rivers.


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