Saturday: With cold,
windy weather today, no one was in favor of paddling. So we met the Mangroves in Duluth and
watched the Lester Race. It was kind of
low, so a last minute call was made to skip Almost Always. Bummer- no carnage. But it was a nice hike up the river on our
tour of the rapids. The rain stopped by
race time, so that worked well. The only
problem was that I was dressed for sitting in one spot in the cold rain. When we hiked up river, it was too warm for
3 layers of pants. J
After the race we went out for Mexican and then headed back
to GSFP for some games and good times.
If you get a chance to try “Ticket to Ride”, I highly recommend it. We had a great time with Mike and Melissa
and Piton! Thanks for the visit!
Sunday: Mike had to
leave for work after breakfast. The
rest of us weren’t so motivated to do any runs. I guess Jeremiah found that none of the good
local creeks were at optimal flows.
So, after a nice mid-morning nap, Melissa made us go to the Baptism. Missy decided not to run. I was really feeling the effects of inertia
and did not want to go either. But I
made myself go. It was strange being in
sunny and 50 degrees and get to a put-in where there was still several feet of
snow on the ground and enormous ice dams on the river banks. The flow looked good, and we met up with a
group that had previously run it. So we
got some good beta on the 3 major rapids and joined forces for the trip.
I had a great run! I
was nervous through the first rapid, but after some nerve-recovery time in the
eddy I was raring to go. It was a fun
level, with some great wave trains. I
picked a better line than Jeremiah on Kramer’s Choice! At S-bend, I remembered the line and styled
it! Poor Melissa didn’t know the rapid,
and since you can’t see what the person in front of you did, she didn’t know
the line and went into a hole. After
taking the scenic route through 2 more holes, she managed to roll up safely.
By the time we got off the river, it was nice and sunny and
warm. We went back to camp and failed
to talk Melissa into calling in sick to stay one more day on the shore.
Monday: Jeremiah and
I went to the visitors center in the morning to use their wifi to play
bridge. It’s nice to have great woodsy
scenery to look at while playing online.
J The plan was that all 3 of us would go do
the Baptism at 3. But when we got back
to camp, both Missy and Jeremiah wanted to postpone a day because the weather
was just too nice to go. Losers. So I went for a bike ride.
Missy and I took the dogs on a walk to the lake. So nice to have the campground to yourselves… We had one funny incident. There are deer everywhere, and they aren’t
at all skittish. So we encountered a
pair that happened to be right by a tall fence. (There’s some argument over whether it was
just a straight fence or if it was an enclosure). One deer sauntered off and the other was
stuck ramming again and again and again into the fence in a panic. Cassie ran up to it and then…stopped in
confusion. This deer was not following
the rules of the game where both parties run as fast as they can and the deer
always wins. It was really amusing to
see Cassie face-to-face with the large animal and not know what to do. After a minute, she went with barking. It was sooooo funny. The deer did finally get loose and run away.
Tuesday: Baptism
day. Nice warm weather. Unfortunately, I got the terrors when we got
to the river. No idea why. I like this run, just had a successful time
the day before, was plenty warm.
Sigh. It was stupid to put on. Anyway, long story short, I flipped in the
canyon section and had no energy to try to roll. I barely got my skirt pulled and had to
fight to swim into a boiling eddy.
Sadly, my boat got trapped in a room of doom. Jeremiah sat and watched it circle 20 times. Finally, we all got off river and had to use
ropes to rappel Missy down the ice cliffs so she could snag the boat. About once every 10 circles, the boat
presented itself in a manner where it could be clipped with a carabineer. We got lucky in that once Missy was hanging
at the river’s edge my boat was clipped on the second circling. Phew?
I kinda was done with kayaking at this point and would have been fine to
lose it like my paddle. Sigh. We hiked up the short hill to a stunning
cabin. Jeremiah walked the 2 minutes
back to the put-in and retrieved the vehicle to come pick us up. So yeah.
That sucked. Thanks to my sibs
for once again rescuing my ass and stuff.
That might be the last time.
The rest of the day was nice. Temps in the 60s with great sun. The only issue was the wind was a little
chilly. We all used the showerhouse and
did some clean-up in anticipation of having JKMC over to visit tomorrow.
