Sipsey River Day

What a fun day we had on Sunday! We took the kayaks out for the first time since we've moved up here.We headed for the forest and took both the explorer and the truck so we could leave one at each end of the trip. It was just beautiful paddling down the Sipsey River. We came to a lot of rapids and you would think...." oh no! rapids!....it's going to be scary"....ha! It just meant that there were big rocks there enough to make the water ripple over them. It also meant that we got the kayaks STUCK on the rocks. Most of the them, we could wiggle the kayaks off the rocks but a couple of times, we had to get out and move them off. The best time to kayak down the Sipsey is in the winter and spring. There isn't enough water during the summer. We were able to make it down the river because our kayaks only sit three or four inches down in the water. We paddled 9.2 miles and it took us about 5 1/2 hours. We packed a picnic lunch and picked a sand bar next to a small canyon for lunch. Chuck caught a craw fish with his hands and we saw a mother duck with two babies BUT....the best was....... I was in front just paddling along and heard a big commotion in the river in front of me. It was two deer....a buck and a doe, just walking down the middle of the river. The water was up to their necks and they just kept coming towards me. It was the high light of the trip. They finally swam over to the side and climbed out and ran into the woods. If you look really close in the fourth picture from the bottom, you can see the buck in the middle of the river. I wish I could have gotten closer to get better pictures of them. It was kinda hard to have the camera ready for pictures the whole trip because I had it in two big zip lock bags, in my cubby hole of my kayak so it wouldn't get wet and every time I wanted to use it, I had to stop and dig it out ....take pictures and then put it all back....all with keeping control of my kayak. I thought my arms were going to be sore the next day from all the paddling but they are just fine. My core muscles are really sore, two days later though. That's " a good thing". I need to build up my core muscles to help my back problems. Guess we just need to take the kayaks out every week.....sounds good to me....ha.