4 Days Canoe Camping the Oconee River | We Found an Artesian Well Nobody Has Touched in Years

In short: Four days canoe camping the last miles of the Oconee River, from the US-280 bridge at Mount Vernon down to Bells Ferry, the last boat ramp the river has. One night alone, then Tina joined me at Clark's Bluff. Both lithium batteries died, her paddle was sitting in my truck at the take-out, and we went on with one blade. So we quit making miles, and the river started handing things over: a piece of driftwood almost shaped like a paddle, three persimmon trees ringed with deer tracks, freshwater mussels in water clear enough to count them, and the waterfall sound across the river that turned out to be an old artesian well, still pouring.

Twelve miles alone

The plan was simple: put in at the US-280 bridge and run twelve miles of the Oconee alone to Clark's Bluff. The river was low and clear enough to watch sand grains move under the paddle, which also meant getting out and walking her through the skinny spots. The first night on a sandbar island brought a bug storm like nothing I have ever seen, thousands of them hitting the tent walls hard enough to sound like a rainstorm, so supper was a can of beanie weenies eaten sitting up in the tent.

The pickup at Clark's Bluff

At two o'clock the next day Tina came down the ramp road at Clark's Bluff Landing, right on time. Twelve miles of river alone, to stand on a concrete ramp in the middle of nowhere Georgia and get picked up like I was waiting on a bus. That was the end of the alone part of the trip. Everything from there we did together.

Both batteries died, one paddle

Then the trip turned backwards. Both lithium batteries died, and Tina's paddle was riding in the back seat of my truck, which was sitting at the take-out. Two people, two nights of gear, three days of river, one paddle. So we paddled.

The still camp on the persimmon bar

We quit making miles. Two nights in one camp on a sandbar with three wild persimmon trees loaded with fruit and ringed with deer tracks, a bath in the river while the sun went down, ham steak with red beans and rice in the cast iron. For the first time on any river trip we have ever run, nowhere to be. That was the whole experiment, and it was working.

The paddle the river left

Walking the bar, there it was: a piece of driftwood laying in the sand, already about the shape of a paddle. Forty five minutes with the hatchet and we had a second paddle. It was not pretty and it was not balanced, but it pulled water all the way to the take-out.

The artesian well across the river

All day I kept hearing what I would have swore was a waterfall across the river, next to a little cabin up on stilts. A moving trip paddles right past a sound like that. A still camp gets to go find out. It was not a waterfall. It was an artesian well, running pure clear water out of a pipe, and by the look of everything around it, nobody had been there in years. There was an old concrete boat ramp too, grown over, somebody's regular spot once. I drank my fill, put my head under it, and we left it how we found it.

Questions about this stretch of the Oconee