Flatwater Packraft - Black River

This trip was the tale of two halves. The first half was in public land, the WDFW bird habitat. It was a giant swamp. Maybe the scenery and wildlife would have been better earlier in the year, I don't know but I would confidently bet so. We were late enough that all the leaves had fallen off the riparian trees and the vibes were kinda post-apocalyptic. The flow was almost non-existent. I expected this was going to be the good part, it wasn't. 

Around 6 miles in, we started to enter a forest and this was the best part because it was actually green! Soon we started getting into some housing and rural development on the shores, but the river got more interesting too, with a real flow and some islands, wood, and obstacles we had to maneuver around and through. After hours of seeing tons of beaver signs with no beavers, we had to paddle through or around what sure looked like a big beaver dam - that was cool. There were consistently steep and heavily vegetated banks, we ate lunch floating in the boats. 

It ended up being more like 12.5 miles, not 10, and took longer than we expected. This wasn't the most exciting trip in the history of packrafting but it had some moments. The first half was a chore but that might be better at a different time of year. The second half was more fun. We all got a good shoulder workout at least.