The mud that once covered the Symmes Creek Boat Ramp is not going to prevent canoes from entering the creek next weekend.

Members of the Symmes Creek Restoration Committee were at the ramp with some individual volunteers last week cleaning it.

All efforts were going toward preparing the area for the restoration committee's annual canoe caper on the Arthur S. Ferguson Canoe Trail at 9:30 a.m. Saturday.

"The purpose is to dramatize and promote a clean creek and get people involved in recreation on the creek," said Grayson Thornton, chairman of the Symmes Creek Restoration Committee. "It's good for the community, good for the creek and, we hope, good for everyone."

The ramp in Chesapeake is the main launching point for the annual creek cleaning event and until Friday morning it was covered in mounds of mud and dirt.

The group came armed with more than lawn mowers and rakes - they had a backhoe.

"I'm just cleaning it off," said David Spaulding, a volunteer who drove in from Mingo County in West Virginia to help his nephew, local country singer Howie Damron, and the committee. Damron was originally set to run the combination backhoe/front end loader before his uncle stepped in to do the job.

"I don't care to help anyone," Spaulding said.

This is the eighth year for the caper, which began as a way for the restoration committee to advance the creek's condition.

Thornton has high hopes for the future of the ramp and park area.

"The creek is a great thing. This could be to Chesapeake what the Harris Riverfront Park is to Huntington," Thornton said. "It has the potential to be the waterfront for Chesapeake. Chesapeake is a small town and we hope to open it up to the community."

The event will include litter pick-up duty by paddlers and T-shirts for those who participate, a raffling off of items including a $600 canoe donated by the National Wild Turkey Federation, music by Damron and a five-mile trek down the Ohio River to a free lunch in Burlington.

"It's a fun trip down the river," Thornton said.

Anyone is welcome to bring a canoe and join in. Those with out a canoe can borrow one of the six donated by the Boy Scouts. Those will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis.

The committee partnered with the county commissioners, the Wayne National Forest, Union Township trustees and the Lawrence-Scioto Solid Waste Authority, Walker Machinery in Huntington and various other individual and business volunteers to get the Symmes Creek Boat Ramp working and cleaned.

For more information call Thornton at (740) 643-0522 or Ray Taylor at (740)

643-1002.