The First Canoe of 2014 - for me at least

Mr. Camera Shy is behind me there!  ;)

I do NOT know how it gets to be 9:30 at night before I sit down and plan to write a blog post.  It is officially too late to start my St. Louis post- again- because that is going to take some time.  So will the kids blog post- sorry my darlings, we all know its about Greggy and Ella now.  Love you muchly but babies tend to win, don't they??  :)

At least the turtle let me take HIS picture

And so did this crazy bull.  I think he is the cutest thing

So, even though I did go to Bayfield yesterday and had a FABULOUS time, I still have a few pix to edit from that trip, and I have some NICE photos from the lil old canoe trip I did this morning.

Headed into the Smith Creek section of the flowage

Yesterday on our trip north, it was discussed that none of us who are inclined to canoe had been out yet.  I blame the weather and the mosquitos. The weather has been somewhat rainy/stormy/windy and the mosquitos  you've heard us complain about before.  I'm sure.  And the river was super high and blah blah blah, I was gone and then it was the 4th of July and company, yeah.  So the weather was forecast to be perfect and the MA built this handy dandy canoe rack AND the dear boy was in Park Falls today which all added up to a plan for the Mad-English teacher Adam and I to jump into the truck this morning and head to Smith Lake County Park.

I love these shots with the canoe tip

It was PERFECT.  The morning was cool, the clouds were partly, and there was a little breeze which did pick up later, and was a bit rude at times on the way back to the boat landing, but nothing we couldn't handle.  SUCH a glorious day.

The Oswald family farm on the river

The water is high, and that was just fine.  It was quite a workout going upstream- but we flying downstream!  It was so so pretty out- and I saw SO many dragonflies.  There were so many different sorts of many different colors, lime green, emerald green, turquoise blue, black, black and white, so so many.  It was a fun thing to see- 4 or 5 landed on me.  But they refused to be photographed!!  I tried to remove my little camera from it's drybag for several of them, but they wouldn't hang around.  I don't keep the camera out of the drybag and I never bring my phone in the canoe.  I just can't take that chance, you know?  So I may go down by the river sometime and see if I can catch a few of them on "film".

More creatures willing to have their photo snapped

Love this shot! 

So 3 hours later we drag ourselves back, only having had one little flaw in our preparations.  While we had lifejackets, backed seat cushions, bug spray and (I had) lip sunscreen, we forgot the water and small snack.  We were flagging by the end there.

I hope that I will get back out there next week, there are supposed to be a succession of nice days again!!  YES!!

And that will be a joy.