Spirit of Moonpie and I spent the 29th through the 31st on the Blackwater below Franklin. The river was normal and 61 degrees. Air temps ranged from 39 to 75 degrees and it was WINDY and very yellow. Believe it or not the trash on this trip was light! Yes, so I do not always say it was the heaviest I have ever seen. I only picked up a half a bag. Now don’t get me wrong, there is plenty out there, but it’s on the shore where I cannot get to it. So, it would be nice for some able bodied people to go downriver (in a boat) from Franklin, along about where the city Public Works is along the river, and pick up there for Clean Rivers Month. One of the missions on this trip was to try to get eyes on the eagles at the Pretlow Farm nest. I’m happy to say I for sure this time saw somebody in the nest.

So that is good and means only the Courtland nest has not been verified as active this year. If anybody has conformation on that nest, please give me a holler. The fishing on this trip was okay; I really did not spend a lot of time fishing, as I was involved with working to catch some poachers. That’s all I can say about that right now. This trip I was staying at that base camp that the bear had visited in between me being there and had tore apart a log to get at slugs and grubs. I was not very happy to see that since last time I was there, the bear had returned for more of the tasty gastropod mollusc. So I was pretty jumpy on this trip and put a hurtin’ on my neck while sitting at the campfire at night. Happily, I do not believe I had any visitors. Well, as you can see by the attached picture, Moonpie has a new ride. We found the big wheel in the water at the mouth of the Franklin City canal and hauled it in. Soon as we did Moonpie was all excited and started singing “Born To Be Wild” and “Bad Little Motor Scooter”. To calm her down, we stopped at the boat landing and I let her take the muddy machine for a couple laps around the parkin’ lot. I was glad ol’ green teeth was nowhere in sight this time on the two rivers we call the Blackwater and Nottoway.

JEFF TURNER is the Blackwater/Nottoway Riverkeeper. He can be reached at blknotkpr@earthlink.net.