East Branch of the St Regis River

I finally got back on the water today - a trip on the East Branch of the St Regis with ADK. The take-out is on Red Tavern Road at the top of this map with the put-in off the bottom.The weather was beautiful and the river was neat with lots of plants in bloom though I didn't get a chance to stop and take pictures along the way. This is at the put in.But it was too much driving for a relatively small amount of paddling. To do the river one way involves an hour-long car shuttle. Plus it took me an hour to get to the put-in on Route 458, though that isn't bad. But the paddle itself was just about 2 hours and that was only because we slowed down to accommodate some of the paddlers. We only paddled a little over 5 miles. We had to go through 3 rapids that I was a bit nervous about, especially in my new boat, but I and my boat came through unscathed. But I would not attempt them going upstream, so if one put in on Red Tavern Road upstream of Everton Falls and paddled upstream to the rapids and then back down it still wouldn't be a very long paddle. So I much prefer the Middle Branch of the St Regis which I would like to do again sometime.