Canoeing the Deer River Flow

Ben Blanchard explores an arm of Deer River Flow.
Ben Blanchard explores an arm of Deer River Flow.

I had been wanting to paddle the Deer River Flow for some time, so when my friend, Phil Blanchard, came with his family to the Adirondacks for vacation, I suggested we take a trip there. Unfortunately, Phil got ill on the morning of our scheduled outing, so his son, Ben, and I did the trip alone.

Ben, who is twelve, was an enthusiastic companion. As we headed down the flow, we had to fight a moderate wind. I feared this might be difficult for Ben.

“Too bad about the wind,” I remarked.

“That’s OK. It makes it more fun,” Ben replied.

“How so?”

“The more you work, the more fun it is,” he said.

“I’ve never heard that theory,” I confessed.

“Because once the trip is done, you feel more satisfaction because you know worked more and you earned it more,” he said.

And you know what? The kid is right.

We paddled nine miles in all. We put in along Cold Brook Road on the south end of the flow, canoed to the large dam at the north end, then took the flow’s riverine east fork to Horseshoe Lake. You can read all about our adventure in a future issue of the Explorer.

About Phil Brown

Phil Brown edited the Adirondack Explorer from 1999 until his retirement in 2018. He continues to explore the park and to write for the publication and website.

Reader Interactions

Comments

Trackbacks

  1. […] an earlier post, I wrote about canoeing the Deer River Flow. A longer story on this trip will appear in a future issue of the Adirondack Explorer. I’m […]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *