My first solo kayak trip of the year and apparently my first blog since 2014 and it's already May. Oh well, as this is my last month of teaching perhaps I will be more vigilant in keeping this up. I'm pretty sure I just got lazy and posted to Facebook though I much prefer this venue. My first kayak trip of the year was a surreal one. I went with friends to a piece of Lake Sangcris that was going to lead us to a small creek. It was a gorgeous 60 degree sunny day and after a long cold spell the sun felt especially warm on my naked arms and legs. We took off and paddled a fair distance, probably 15 minutes into our trip we noticed the lake looking particularly reflective. As we paddled closer we were soon consumed by an icy mixture much like paddling through a giant Sonic slushy. The sound was wonderful even it if did make it a bit more difficult to paddle. But as we continued on we got to a point of totally frozen lake with at least an inch thick of ice. We laughed and worked to break our way through. Clunk, Clunk, Splash, push. It made the trip extremely difficult as we had to first break the ice with our oars and then try to push ourselves forward. Thinking the creek of moving water wouldn't frozen we forged forward making our way along the edge of the water where the ice wasn't quite as thick. After almost an hour of hard paddling we stopped and decided to turn back as we were still far from the creek. Ten or fifteen minutes into our return we discovered that the ice that had covered the lake was entirely gone. It vanished in an instant. Wish I had carried my camera that day. The sun sparkling on the ice covered lake was like a path of diamonds.
From yesterday's trip on Lake Springfield into Sugar Creek I saw four snakes, three deer laying by the water and tons of turtles. It was an overcast day except for a blast of sun every so often. I made it out before the storm hit but got to see the dark clouds roll in quickly.
I was so relaxed on this trip I fell asleep and ended up under branches of a red cedar like this one.
