120 Miles Solo Kayak Camping the Au Sable River

Right now I'm kayaking 120 miles alone down Michigan's Asobo River starting in the central lower peninsula of Michigan in the town of Graylee make my way east downstream towards Lake Huron. I have to portage six dams and it's going to take roughly five to six days. It's 11 a.m right now let's get paddling. Right now I'm on a section of the river that's called the Holy Waters. It's a nine mile stretch that I guess is just perfect for trout fishing. It's got really shallow waters and fast moving river and I've been seeing a lot of them swimming around. I might need to learn how to fly fish. It looks fun. I keep seeing bald eagles everywhere but they're already mid-flavor by the time I see them and catch them too late. Oh there's some birch bark right here I want to grab off this dead tree. I hope there's no spiders in this. Ants. That should be good. All right there we go. Found a little birch bark to start tonight's fire. I got that onX map app a while back so I mapped out all the campsites and campgrounds along the river and then by the end of the day I can kind of just tell where I want to stay for the next few miles of where I am. It's getting pretty late right now so we've got a campground about a mile I'm going to check out and hopefully we'll stay there. Wow it is gorgeous out here right now. I could not have asked for a better day. It's like 75 degrees and intermittent clouds and the sun. A little breeze. Perfect. All right so for tonight's dinner I have a homemade chicken cheese, beans, rice, jalapeno, and one more ingredient burrito. I'm excited for that. I have not ate much today. That's going to be delicious. All right now I got to get the new tent out. I'm excited to check this out. It's basically just a screen bivvy. All right it's time for dinner. I'm so excited. I haven't eaten in hours. Oh yeah the thing I forgot that was in here was chipotle. All right let me see how far I've gone. Looks like I went just about 20 miles so I've got another 100 to go. I'm really not even sure if the trip is even set in yet. I'll probably feel it for sure tomorrow. Breakfast I have another homemade burrito. This one is turkey sausage with cheese, eggs, a little bit of beans, and potatoes. Yeah this thing is by far the easiest tent I've ever had to set up. I guess it's not really a tent though. It's a bivvy but it is only $50 on Amazon so that's completely worth it. That's a river and I'm going to attempt to do another 20 miles today and we should make it to the campground right before the first day. Fun fact for the day, Asabo in French means sand or sandy so Asabo river is the sandy river or something like that and there's definitely plenty of it here. Ah I can never catch the bald eagles. They spot me way before I spot them. That looks like a huge nest in one of those scat pines right there. I went down the wrong canal. I got rid of shallow. I think that's good. All right I finally made it to the first of the large ponds. This is an iopond. The campground I'm going to try to stay at is a couple miles up here near the dam. I definitely got to work more on these bigger lakes. I don't have the nice flow of the river to push me along. All right the campground's right along this shore somewhere. All right this is different. It's a group campground. I got camp set up and there's plenty time of the day left and when I was planning this trip I always knew I was going to walk to town so I could pick up more food for the rest of the trip. So now I have to walk a mile across the dam and to the store. way to Mayo canoe campground. I'm gonna get to sleep and try to get on the river as early as possible. Oh portaging around that dam was a workout. Still can't get a shot of that elusive bald eagle. It's getting hot out here. There's Buttercup campground so I'm at the halfway point that's 60 miles. Princess Buttercup. Name that movie in the comments if you know what it is. I already went 20 miles today. I'm gonna try to go another 8-10 miles. I'm finally getting the wind in my back so I should go a little faster. So the whole reason I got the idea to do this trip was last year I was searching on YouTube places to camp on the Asaba river and I came across a bunch of videos about the Asaba river canoe marathon. Basically it's a race that goes the same stretch. I am 120 miles. It's about 80 teams. Two people a team and the first place team gets done in roughly 14 hours. So 120 miles in 14 hours. They start at 9 p.m and finish at 11 in the morning. So they have like headlamps and lights on the front of their canoes and I guess they do it at that time so they don't hit the heat of the day and wear themselves out. Heat exhaustion. So I thought that was really cool and I was like well I got to do my own Asaba river canoe marathon and this is it. At least I get to enjoy the scenery a dinner I'm going to change it up a little bit. I'm going to do a rare dehydrated meal and this is buffalo style mac and cheese. That's good. This might be one of the best Yeah I got really hot on this open water. There's no wind. No breeze. I had to cover myself up more. For those of you who are regulars with the channel you know I usually have my black labradoodle with me but this trip was just too long and sitting on the river all day in the sun for her would have just been hell. She wouldn't have had any fun. I've barely given her any time to swim or run on the shoreline until we got to camp so she wouldn't have had a great time but hanging out with her grandparents right now so she's having fun either way. It's beautiful out here on the big water but I'd rather be on the rivers where it's flowing. It just feels like you're moving faster. You probably are. Wow back one of my subscribers. I can't remember her name right now. I'm sorry but she saw me in one of my videos boiling water and using the iodine tablets and she put in the comments why don't you use a grail. I didn't even know what a grail was but this is an off-brand. Half the price of a grail on Amazon. Batch gold, buck gold, something like that. Basically it's a french press filter so you just fill up the cup and then top piece you start pushing down ever so slightly in the cup until it goes through the filter and it's full. That's the fastest way to purify water. This wind came out of nowhere. It's a bad headwind for a few miles. Just gotta power through and I'm getting drenched. I did all eight miles of Cook Dam Pond in two hours. It kicked my ass and I kicked its ass. Next is Foot Dam Pond. Just over 15 miles to go. I really don't know if I can go anymore. I'm gonna have to find a camp really quick. This looks like a spot. All right, I know it's still light out but I'm exhausted. My arms feel like they're gonna fall off so I'm gonna try and get a lot of sleep tonight before the last 16 miles tomorrow. See you then. Disclaimer, do not attempt to make coffee in your own kayak. used to be a logging river years ago. The American Bald Eagle. I finally caught it on camera. Six miles to go. There's a little bit of luck. I'd be lying if I said it felt like my arms weren't gonna fall off. This is definitely one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life but one of the coolest and I never could have imagined finishing this on the first day. But here I am, 120 miles later at Lake Huron. This is epic. I did have an amazing time. Hopefully you guys had fun hanging out with me. Don't forget to like and subscribe if it's your first time here. But anyway, I'll see you on the next Atlas Adventure.