Long time, no post

I can't believe how quickly the summer goes. It surprises me every year. Perhaps it's because it started so late this year. In any case, we've been keeping busy with softball, wiffleball, kickball and weekend warrior-ing.

Two weekends ago some girlfriends and I went on a weekend kayak/canoe/camping trip and had a blast. Well, minus the bajillion mosquito bites we endured! Yes, literally a bajillion! I have never had that many bites in my life combined before that weekend.

We went down the Kickapoo river in Wisconsin. Friday night we went to one of the girls' dad's house to spend the night because he lived nearby and that enabled us to get an earlier start on the weekend bright and early Saturday morning. Saturday we kayaked/canoed about 10 river miles, then set up camp along the river, about 10 feet up a hill so that we wouldn't get washed out by the storms that came that night. We played a dice/quiz game and cooked dinner over a campfire and enjoyed some adult beverages.

Sunday morning, we woke up to find a weird scraggly fishermad hanging around our campsite. Needless to say we scrambled to get our stuff onto the boats and boats onto the water ASAP! When safely down river a bit we stopped for breakfast and to load up on sunscreen. We ended up have to portage around a first obstacle where several trees had fallen across the river. We came upon a second that was impassable by canoe. We got two kayaks past and went further down river only to find more impassable obstacles. SO we kayaked back to the first blockade, told the group we had to pull out, and then the whole group (3 kayaks, two full canoes, and 7 lovely ladies) went back upstream to the last bridge we went under and pulled all of our gear up the bank to a dirt road. We were lucky enough to have a park ranger pass, so we flagged him down and talked him into escorting our outfitter back to get us and our gear and their watercraft. If he hadn't come along, we would've had to carry that all 1/2 mile down a dirt road to the highway (apparently, the outfitter is not allowed on park property normally).

In spite of all this, or perhaps because of all this, we had a blast and I can't wait to go again next year. The scenery was beautiful and company was even better.