Chasing the Channel – Blog No. 2

Chasing the Channel – Blog No. 2

It feels really good to be back on the Kansas River with the public. Last weekend, we took a group out on the Kansas River from Junction City to Ogden for one of our educational paddle trips. This was the first time that we had had the public on the river since April 2019 before the floods hit. We’ve had other events, and we’ve certainly been on the river doing river checks, but it had been a long time since we’ve had a public river event.

We also are in the process of working on a project on a piece of property along the Kansas River. We posted on our social media photos of a beautiful riparian buffer forest and we look forward to sharing more details soon. In other news, we continue to check the river and monitor for pollution. And as you can imagine, with COVID-19 cases increasing, we are making plans for a different version of Beers of the Kaw and will have an announcement soon.

By now, if you follow us on social media, you have seen that we are in full swing planning for the KAW 173…our journey to paddle all 173 miles of the Kansas River over a period of 7 to 10 days. Along the way, we will have community visits at several boat ramps as well as public paddles where the public can join us on a section of the river. All of these dates and times have been scheduled. To see the complete schedule to join us, go here: https://kansasriver.org/kaw173-jc-to-kc-on-the-water-trail/

We hope that many of you can join us on these public paddles, or if you’d rather meet us on land, come to one of our community visits. We’d love to see you and hear about your connections to the Kansas River Water Trail. I will also blog every day from the river about what I see…people, wildlife, community connections, and the beauty of it all!

Our journey will be challenging, but we’ve been planning this for over two years and feel ready. Initial plans were to do this trip in 2019 and those were canceled due to the flooding. So our team is certainly ready and we are prepared as best we can be. We look forward to seeing you all along the way.

My best to you all and wishes for good health.

For the river,

Dawn Buehler

Your Kansas Riverkeeper