A full day of navigation and by end of afternoon we arrived at Beacon Rock State Park.
Navigation upriver is rather slow on Enfin. After all we're slow to begin with. We're made for distance, not speed, a bit like our crazy husky Princess. Add a hull that has only been diver clean but not fully redone in quite a while and going upriver becomes a trek.
At least we know we'll be flying on the way back. Today we encountered up to about 3.5 knots of current, so that will be a lot of extra speed on our return.
We were very lucky that despite a late arrival we found open dockage only a couple of days before the Labor Day weekend.
In fact the dock was full when we arrived, but one boat kindly told us they'd be leaving shortly, so another offered that we could raft-up to them while waiting. I had to turn the boat around in a tight space, and arrive precisely rafted with a smaller boat without breaking either one. Realistically without breaking our kind neighbor considering Enfin is about twice as heavy as your typical 80's Taiwanese trawler.
Di didn't notice the neat maneuvering as she was all about keeping an eye on the lines. I joked that she would notice if things ever go wrong.
A nice extra at this State Park is that we had 30 Amp electricity at the dock, so no need to run the generator at all.
A few long walks for Princess and everyone's health and we retired to the boat.
We remarked that every boat at the small dock had a dog, so we figured we were in good company. Unfortunately with my immune-compromised status we try not to mingle with people. It makes us slightly antisocial, but most people understand, and some even have had their own fight with cancer so understand our carefulness very well.
A good place overall, and we hesitated a bit as to whether we would stay a few days or keep pushing upriver. After a few back and forth we decided to stand by our original plan of going upriver as "fast" as we can go, so we'd have time on the way back. The logic is that on the way back we should have even less people at the various stops, and with the increased speed of going down current we should be able to time things a lot better.
So, after getting a few points of advice from the locals as to how to navigate the Bonneville lock, only a few miles up from us, we set sail end of morning.
Unfortunately Di hurt her back yesterday, so she's been trying to rest and not hurt herself more, so I'm trying to do most maneuvering on my own. Enfin is small enough to be easy to maneuver on my own luckily, so no big deal from my end. I just hope Di will recover fast.
Beacon Rock State Park was a nice stop on the way up. We'll probably spend a few days there on the way down if the park is still open. It closes "in the winter" though we couldn't ascertain what "winter" meant in this case. In some tourist areas is can mean after Labor Day rather than the 21st December. We'll see.