River Life

Last weekend was the Dragon Boat Festival, down here on the river. I am not sure if I mentioned it before, but my apartment is right on the Maumee River, which happens to be the largest watershed river into the Great Lakes (Lake Erie). There are three rivers that converge in downtown Fort Wayne - the St. Mary, the St. Joe, and the Maumee - and so, river life is a real thing in this town. At least, it was years ago, and it is becoming so again now. 

Quick little history lesson: these rivers were used 150 years ago as a "short cut" for transporting French goods from Quebec to New Orleans and were also considered a "major highway" for getting around in this part of the country. With the age of cars and trains and such, lots of bridges were built to cross the meandering rivers, and the water became just part of the scenery, a convenient place to dump waste, and a nuisance to city planners who couldn't maintain a nice, even grid-like street pattern. 

My friend Pam told me this week that a few decades ago, the city government decided to use a rather large chunk of legacy funds to clean up the rivers and bring the center of life back to them. They've been working on this huge underground project called Deep Rock Tunnel, which will eventually clean and maintain the rivers. The first phase of river life development began with Promenade Park, which is the park right next to my apartment complex. This project was such a huge success that the city is moving forward with several other "phases" to promote community on the rivers in the future. 

So anyway, over the weekend Promenade Park hosted Dragon Boat Races, in which groups of rowers raced long boats up and down the Maumee through the city. The festivities ended that evening with live music and what they called "Floating Fire." My Disney Princess mind immediately thought that meant "floating lanterns," like in Tangled, and I was super excited to see paper lanterns lighting up the sky and the river. But what it actually meant was that there were bonfire pits on floating platforms in the water, and a dragon boat sailed through and lit them all, so as to give the impression that the river was on fire. Not quite as magical and romantic as I imagined, but still a pretty cool effect. My friend Julie and I walked along the Treetop Canopy Trail and found a good spot to people watch and view the ceremony. 

The next day, my friend Rachel and I got to check off one of my summer bucket-list things together, by taking a 45-minute river tour on the Sweet Breeze Canal Boat. It docks at Promenade, so we got onboard there and enjoyed the cool gentle breeze from the water. The captain gave us the "safety talk," about life vests and exit points but assured us that he really didn't foresee any real danger. An amiable old gentleman with red-framed glasses and a tattoo of the word "Budapest" across his calves was our "bosun" - which he defined as the person who talks too much. He was actually our tour guide and is the reason I know what I now know about Fort Wayne's river history. We went under various bridges and saw plenty of wildlife, such as turtles and muskrats and shirtless guys in kayaks. 

It started to rain a bit, and I enjoyed it because I was under a roof in the boat and the raindrops looked so pretty on the surface of the water. Then it rained harder, and the wind picked up and blew the rain into the boat, and we couldn't see very far in front of us, and before I knew it, I was experiencing my first "storm at sea"! The bosun literally battened down the hatches and the captain steered us back to port, where we landed safely. 

We've had a couple more heavy rains since then, so I am guessing the water levels are high and there may be some flooding... that happens when you live in the confluence of three rivers! It's been fun to learn about and experience "river life" this summer in Fort Wayne.