By Amy Debach

Throughout the summer, I make careful plans to fill each weekend with exciting or adventurous rompings. Generally, these arrangements are made far in advance and anticipated. This year, I chose to leave some weekends open. To not plan. To not anticipate. To be spontaneous and stay local. Recently, on one of these unplanned weekends, I decided to go tubing with some friends.

Generally, when I speak of tubing I am referring to memories of our family fishing boat named “The Spoon Washer” tugging us along by a ski rope at 20-30 mph on Keuka Lake in New York. I thought that I had outgrown this type of excitement some years ago, so when I was asked to meander in the water for an afternoon of tubing on Bald Eagle Creek, I willingly accepted the slower-paced offer.

We met at 1:30 on a sunny Sunday in July. It was the kind of day where sunscreen was often reapplied and drinks didn’t stay cold. The meeting spot was the bingo hall parking lot in Milesburg (located near the bright yellow bridge). Our crew, along with several other adventurers blew up our tubes, made sure the coolers were stocked, and double-checked the waterproof safety of our phones and devices for tunes and photos while tubing.

My crew had a variety of single and double river tubes donning cup holders and cooler space. Everyone carried their float above their heads to the backside of the bingo hall and down the embankment to the creek below the bold yellow bridge. I watched as people dipped their toes into the chilly water that we would soon be submerged in, and quickly pulled them back out again.

I had briefly researched the route and desired end point and found that it is 3.8 miles from the Yellow Bridge in Milesburg to our chosen end point, the bridge in Curtin Village.

The stretch of water before the Milesburg bridge is called The Sunny Side Paddle Park and is a section of water that runs from Tussey Mountain Outdoors in Bellefonte to above the bridge in Milesburg is referenced in an article by American White Water, “The run from Tussey Mountain Outfitters (TMO) to Bald Eagle Creek in Milesburg is a 2-mile paddle, therefore the shuttle is a quick 10 minutes along Rt. 144; very convenient for an evening paddle after work.”

When everyone was gathered and the two-man crew returned from leaving a car at the endpoint, we each splashed down in our tubes. There is no graceful way of doing this and each person had their own version of vocal surprise regarding the water temperature, which was still cold despite the July heat.

After tying all of the tubes together and getting situated, we began to float.

I watched the group ahead of us take off and they hadn’t gotten very far ahead of us before I realized it was going to take a while at this speed. While floating, it was nice to see fishermen casting their line, folks waving from their creekside setups, and rustic canoes and bright kayaks passing us on either side. At one point we made a stop for the kids and brave adults to climb an embankment where a rope swing hung from a limb. They each took turns grabbing the rope and jumping with precise technique into the water below. After some photo ops, we continued floating, passing by unseen local landmarks and under the Route 80 bridge, where we all made the signal for truckers above to beep their horns as we passed beneath them.

There were points along the way where the water became so low, we’d all have to lift up to avoid a bum/rock collision. Someone was generally on the lookout for larger rocks so that our crew could paddle quickly and avoid them. While there were a few exhilarating rushes of higher water and faster floating, there were also spots of lower water, which caused a tube-bumper-car pile-up effect in which we had to get up and pull or carry the tubes to higher water. This was much easier to manage for those of us who were wearing water shoes.

We passed by kids playing in the creek, ducks frolicking, and other tubers with various tubing equipment who commented on how “professional” our tubing group looked while they were still amateur floaters in self-inflated pool floats.

I say, if it floats, it floats!

Nearing the end of the four-hour excursion, we began to look for the bridge in Curtin Village for our exit from the creek, but a railroad bridge came first. Two brave members of our team climbed the embankment to see if it would be worthwhile to get out at this point and walk our tubes down the road but it was risky and the parking lot in Curtin couldn’t be seen from there. We floated a bit farther while gathering our personal items and before exiting the creek, where others were just arriving to make the float from Curtin Village to where the creek opens up to become Sayer’s Dam water.

Jerry Glen, writing in a blog post for Curtin Village, said, “These days, it is not unusual to see folks floating down the Bald Eagle Creek in canoes, kayaks, or inner tubes. It’s not a white-water experience. It’s more like a pleasant-Sunday-afternoon kind of a place.”

After flopping out onto the shore and deflating our trusty river tubes, we lugged them up the hill to the vehicle and jumped into the back of a pickup truck to be taken back to the bingo hall.

The entire Bald Eagle Creek spans 55.2 miles and is mostly in Centre County and the 3.8 miles we completed in tubes made for a wonderful sunny Sunday activity!

Click the link to learn about how the Metro-rural mix made Bellefonte a perfect new hometown for Amy Debach