A FAMILY DAY ON THE RIVER.

Let me set the mood for you.......

A beautiful HOT (upper 90's)summer day, two overworked forty year olds, one fourteen year old, three yellow kayak's, and a 7 mile kayak ride down the Blue River!!!


Due to staff shortage at both our job's neither one of us have any time off this year. Kelsey has been traveling most of the summer with my parents and has not been home much. So we decided to take a few day off before Kelsey goes back to school and get in some quality family time. The first few days started out real slow, just stayed close to home and caught up on that extra sleep we have been missing by working extra overtime. But one day we wanted to see what it would be like to relax on the river. Now most of you all know, to Mike a relaxing day on the river is his 21 foot ranger bass boat, but not today......... He traded in his 200 horse power engine for a paddle.

Now Kelsey on the other hand was real thrilled I have a camera, I wish I had a dime for every time she got mad at me for having this camera in her face ( I would be rich). Here you will see she is trying to ignore me but I just keep on clicking. Little does she know this picture makes her look like she is picking her nose. She really is NOT, just board waiting for the bus to pick us up.

So we load the bus to ride several miles up river to our put in spot. As you see I am not in many of these photo's because I am the one with the camera. You would think as much as I have it stuck in their face they would want to get back at me and take mine, but nooooooooo I am always the one taking theirs.

Here we go down the river................................................

Sorry about the quality of these photo's, see I did not want to take my good camera with us so I bought a cheap disposal camera and it was not water proof. WHAT WAS I THINKING!

We started out smooth and getting used to the kayak's, the map provided to us at the rental shop showed we would end going about 7 miles, with two to three rapids along the way. Well let me explain what they called rapids, there were more than two, try 5 different places. You see southern Indiana has not had any rain in several weeks so all the creeks and ponds around here are VERY low, so when we got to the rapids it was very shallow water. Often times you would bottom out and get stuck and have to get out of your kayak and walk it past the so called rapids.
By about the third or fourth rapid we were tried of getting stuck and we had not even gone about 2 miles of our 7 mile trip. We were thinking if we have to do this the whole way it's going to be a long day! By the time we got to the last rapid (or shallow section) it split around an island. Kelsey and Mike went to the left and was having a hard time and I went to the right thinking it might be easier. BOY WAS I WRONG.... in short....got stuck, went to get out of my kayak, fell forward and was lying on top of the kayak, was able to float lose and when I went to get up, the kayak turned over, dumping me into the river. Of course Kelsey and Mike were laughing so hard they could not help much, I at this point have had enough. Get me out of here, I was not enjoying what God had created because it was to much work!!!! Once he was able to stop laughing Mike did come to my rescue and helped me pour all the water out of the kayak and catch the things that floated out of my kayak, and get be back on track again.
He is a good man:)

Now this was our last rapids, (we did not know this till after) and the remaining 4 to 5 miles was all higher water which was really enjoyable. We were able to pull off in spots and break for lunch and Kelsey loved swimming in the river.


By the end of the 7 miles we were all so glad to see the take out spot. Our arms and backs were is so much pain it was going to be a long ride home.
I am going to leave you now with just a few extra photos taking along the way.
Enjoy and love you all:)