We Survived!!!

So I have to say this weekend was an amazing one and quite adventurous. I had planned a 25 mile trip down the lower wisconsin river over 2 days. The boy and I both woke up with a cold and I decided that instead of leaving at the crack of dawn....we should sleep in so that we were better rested for day 1. We left land around 4pm and headed downstream. With the late start and a leisurely pace we only traveled about 7 miles on day one. We set up camp on an island in the middle of the river and had about 60 minutes from our arrival on the island until sun down. We worked very well as a team...the tent was up and the fuel for the fire was collected all before sun-down. We built the fire, made chicken tortellini (sp?) and laid under the stars with our cocktails until we finally moved into the tent for a nights sleep.

This is where the fun began. I was raised camping on the Missouri river and am quite aware that the river level can rise quite quickly with rain upstream. To our knowledge there was no rain North of us. When I unzipped the front of our tent I noticed that the island we were on had changed drastically. THANK GOD we moved our tent to a better spot before we settled. Or we would have slept underwater. Our kayaks were beach bound when we went to bed. WERE beach bound. One of the kayaks was gone and the other was barely stuck in shallow water. I grabbed a life jacket, water through the water to the kayak and took off downstream while the P built a fire. Surprisingly I found the other kayak about a mile or so down stream, tied it to my boat and paddled upstream. Paddling upstream sucks...especially against the wind with a 2nd boat tied on. Luckily the fire was started, we made some oatmeal, packed back up and headed downstream. Our total trip was about 14.5 miles. We'll be back to do a 25'er and then the 90 mile trip to the Mississippi River.

We got back to chicago about 30 minutes before the Mika concert we had planned on attending for his birthday. We unloaded the jeep, changed as fast as possible, and arrived at the concert smelling like dirty river water. the concert was amazing!!!