Luke and Katie have been visiting Springfield for a few days. While Katie and Ginger hunkered down in Ginger’s studio, Luke and I spent several hours in Bass Pro, and on Thursday ventured out kayaking.
The put-in next to the Veterans’ Cemetery that we planned to use was closed. However, we didn’t let that deter us. We simply launched the kayaks from the bank. The put-in seems to be shut while bridge construction work is underway between the existing Highway 65 bridges – just east of the put-in.
There was no work taking place over the water so we took our chance and headed up-stream. We had an easy paddle in quite warm temps (96°F) We quit heading upstream when we encountered the second riffle – though we almost didn’t get that far as early on there was a tree down across the river. On closer inspection we discovered that there was a four foot gap between the tree and the bank – just enough room for us to paddle through.
When we got to the second riffle there was a nice amount of water running, and we beached the kayaks to take a look around. Luke got his feet wet, and I decided to go one better and had a short swim. It was refreshing and cooled me down nicely for the trip back down river to the put-in.
Getting ready for this afternoon’s trip was a tad harder than it should have been. The kayaks were covered in sawdust from my winter wood-working activities in the Garage. Luke vacuumed them out while I hunted high and low for missing Personal Flotation Devices and the brackets needed to carry the kayaks on the the roof of the van. The problem was I’d tidied the garage and hadn’t got a clue where I’d tidied them away to. It took me at least an hour of moving things around and opening boxes to finally locate them. Tidying is not such a good idea. I think I’ll not do it in future.