Lovill Creek
Mount Airy, North Carolina

Lovill Creek is an estuary of the Ararat River that runs from Lovill Creek Reservoir in Cana, Virginia to nearby Mount Airy, NC.    A walking trail and greenway follow the creek as it makes it way through town.  It's normally a tiny flood controlled creek, but maybe 3 or 4 times a year it really cranks up.  Just above the Pine Street bridge a ledge followed by a second drop can turn into a play spot at the right water level.  When the water rises even higher, a second rock ledge below the bridge will create a nice hydraulic.   For my own purposes, I named this hole, which happens to be next to Creekside Cinemas The Cineplex (catchy, huh?). 

June 26th, 2006. 

With my nephew manning the camera under the bridge, I surfed the Pine Street play-spot as rain continued to feed the already flash flooding Lovill Creek.  I dropped down to the Cineplex once and surfed it briefly before the hydraulic had its way with me.  It was a super fun park-n-play evening with enough volume to give me a few butterflies and get my adrenaline pumping.    A big thanks goes to my nephew Jesse for keeping an eye on me.

 October 7, 2005. After a two month drought, it finally rained.  And rained.  And rained.  The water was rising, but wouldn't get really big until Saturday and Sunday following heavier thunderstorms. I wouldn't be available on those days though, so we had to take what we had and run with it.  Nothing hairy, but enough to get the boats wet.  Jeff's BigEZ hadn't made it to a river yet and I hadn't been in the GT since July.   The water on Lovill Creek wasn't high enough to create the Cineplex hydraulic next to Creekside, but the two step drop above the Pine Street bridge looked pretty good.  So it was a strict park and play evening.  Even so, I actually had a lot of fun and love the GT.  It is such a nice feeling, compared to the Element, to be able to drop in backwards or spin around on a dime.  I really look forward to all the fun we are going to have with these boats.    

The Cineplex (2.7MB)

July 7, 2004. We had an enormous amount of rain today, and even a tornado warning, so when Amy came home from work at eight, I took the Element around the corner to Lovill Creek.  Had I a playboat, it would have been a great place to park and play.  With the Dagger Element, I just wanted to run through it a few times.  My Element is the best all-around flat-water/river running rec boat ever, but it is NOT, I repeat NOT, a playboat.  So I put-in at the Independence Blvd bridge and paddled to the walking trail parking lot behind the cinema.  The first time through The Cineplex my boat parked at the bottom of the drop, water came over the bow high enough to go over my shoulders, I wasn't sure the skirt was going to hold, then with a paddle stroke or two she popped right out (that only took about two seconds).  So I swung around and found that if I stayed close enough to the bank I could paddle back up stream.  I took a photo and since some folks were standing around watching, I thought I might as well drop in again.  The second time I didn't get far enough upstream to get completely turned, so I went in at an angle.  The Blackwater is dang near unsinkable though and, after getting set down in the foam for just a second or two, it popped right out again.  My buddy Jeff who had ran the full length of the trail earlier in the week pulled up and got me to run it one last time so that he could film it.  The Blackwater shot straight through with no hesitation at all during that last run.  So it was a fun thirty minutes and something that I had wanted to do for a while.  You can watch me fly right through The Cineplex (2.7MB) if you want, it's dark and grainy, but you'll get to listen to 12 seconds of The Killer Barbie's Down The Street.