The weather today was iffy and I took my time deciding to go or not. In the end it turned out to
be a perfect day with warm temps, humid, a nice following wind all day, and the exact people we
needed to do the work.

We got some great photos of our group with our Consumers Energy Foundation Grant Banner.
We will share these with CEF for their use.

I had planned to split into two teams and clean from CR-612 to Long's and from Long's to M-72, but
the weather forecast was for rain and thunder storms by 2pm and I didn't want anyone to get stuck
in that so I shortened the trip to just CR-612 to Long's.

But Kathy, Kim, Tracie and a few others decided to just go ahead and take a chance and paddle to M-72.
They came to paddle and they were not going to let a little rain stop them, and they were right. It never
did rain on any of us.

We found this piece of drainage pipe which was tangled in a logjam and we marked it with our GPS camera
for later removal like the dock on the UPR last week.

We did discover that the sign for Long's Livery, which is now owned by ShelHaven is not in the right place
and we had to drag our boats back upstream for 100 yards to get there. The old channel is completely clogged
with vegetation and is impassable. You must take the one just upstram on river left to get to Long's now.

Be sure to stay LEFT at the forks in that area if you can after entering that channel or you could miss the landing.

Map of location of clogged channel

We have a plan to re-position or replace the sign for others so they can avoid doing what we had to do.

The takeout was a bit confusing since we were at a private commercial property and they were busy with
customers and we were in their way. We did not have a chance to get photos of the trash but we got about
6-8 bags of trash and some small lumber cut-offs that someone tossed into the river while working on their
dock or house.

Paul got to use his new experimental tool that Norm built for him and Paul said that it works really well.
They both were happy to know that he will be able to use it for a long time to keep our rivers clean.

The best photo of the day was one of Dee when she found part of a sign that read, "DON'T LITTER".
That's a contest winner

All the photos can be seen here:

All the Photos from this project

Our work today was partially funded by grants from

The Consumers Energy Foundation

National Cherry Festival Foundation

Adams Chapter Trout Unlimited

And private donors like you.

Thank Yous go out to Todd at ShelHaven for letting us use the old Long's Livery for our takeout site.