Siren's Call

Friday July 20

Nora had asked me, if I wanted to go to Taylors Falls on the St. Croix with her. I somehow rationalized myself into taking the day off despite looming deadlines - and what a gorgeous day it was!!!

The pictures below are from another equally gorgeous day at the same spot but taking the steam boat. You have to look close, but there are actually a couple of playboaters who I may meanwhile know, but I don't quite recognize their boats and gear. At the time I got all concerned, because I saw this one guy working it really hard and still not escaping this spot. When I told my friend, that we need to get help for a rescue, she explained to me, that no, he's just surfing. Aah. You can imagine I felt a bit like an idiot :-).

Exhausted from the week's grind and too little sleep I didn't have the fight in me to actually run it, although the current low water level would have made it a fairly mellow run. Tried not to beat myself up for letting Nora down on that one. And I didn't have to, because she nearly wacked me with her paddle, after I had "learned" what trespassing is :-) The guy and his wife were super-nice about it and extremely eager to help me out and show me a good route. After all, they clearly could tell that I had in no way meant to be, where I had ended up. "Vat, sis is not se vay to se osser side of se britch? Sorry!" So no harm to the reputation of good kayakers done, phiew!

And hey, ferry work is good too and since I had lost my ferry this spring I definitely want to get a lot of practice in. And I can tell that my abs are getting stronger from concentrating on better body rotation on the flat stretches, I can still feel some arm toning, but I can live with that :-).

We broke for lunch and had greasy food. Just as well, that I don't usually get to do that. I don't think it would do anything for me and my "under water work" :-).

Nora showed me a great way of getting the boat over a stretch of too shallow water without us looking like bent old hags. Sticking the paddle into the bow of the boat and pushing it probably made us more look like housewives with very strange pinafores and even stranger hoovers before we were afloat and on our way back upriver again. But we were not alone...in fact we were being "ferreted out" by a cute little and wet wanna-be otter who ran alongside with us on shore with his head peaking out over the rocks every so often, checking up on what we were up to. And yes, we bumped into Jeff, a hard to mistake greenland paddler with his homemade yellow boat.

It's such a pretty river, so here's some more impressions from my first trip to the St. Croix with my kayaking friends Roxanne, Courtney & Tom, a couple of years ago and just a little further downstream from the rapids.