We've been planning a kayaking/geocaching trip on the Yellow River for a while now = even though several members of our party were convinced I was leading them on the Voyage of the Damned.
This past Sunday the weather looked perfect and we decided to go for it.
My Dad started calling me Charon - ferryman of Hades who carries souls of the newly deceased across the rivers Styx and Acheron to the world of the dead - but I wasn't worried.
We put in at Boiling Creek and then paddled out to the river.
It was absolute heaven! The river wasn't too swift, it wasn't hot, it wasn't cold or windy - it was perfect.
There are 8 geocaches hidden along the river bank so we paddled slowly down the river aiming for the first cache.
We searched for the first cache for a few minutes and then our friend Shawn spotted it. Which is ironic since he was the only person with us who had never been geocaching before.
We signed the cache log and were off to find the next one.
We ran into a small problem at some of the other caches. There really isn't anywhere to beach a kayak so you have to pull up to the area you think the cache is in
and then find a way to get out of your kayak and up into a tree.
I won't even try to tell you that I didn't happily sit back and let the boys handle those.
We found some of the caches and didn't find a couple of others. I don't know if they were there and we didn't see them or if they are gone.
It didn't matter. Just being on the river made all of us happy.
Our original plan was to pull the kayaks out downstream of the last cache, but range closures changed our plans and we had to paddle back upstream to a different boat launch after the last cache.
I didn't realize how many arm muscles I don't use until I started paddling upstream.
At one point I considered just floating all the way out to Blackwater Bay and calling my Mom to come and pick me up wherever I landed lol
But we made it back to the landing and were praising ourselves that all of the Voyage of the Damned talk was for naught when Amy fell out of her kayak.
At least we were at the landing and her dry clothes were there in the truck so she wasn't miserable.
While the people made it back in tact, our electronics didn't do so well.
I beached my kayak at one point and as I bent over to pull it up onto the bank my camera fell out of my shirt pocket and into the river.
