Well, it certainly was a busy Spring. Between coming back to Illinois from Arizona, replacing our floors, unpacking, a photo shoot in Texarkana, TX, unpacking more, building and planting our raised bed garden and adding our rain collection barrel, I was actually able to pull off a Spring Kayak to launch the season. What a great launch it turned out to be, too. I had a TON of help!
This event coincides and introduces the Get Out ‘n Do It Meetup Group. The Meetup Group will offer free outings, such as this, to introduce people to various outdoor activities before investing in longer trips or expensive gear.
My wife, Rachael, deserves major props for helping me with last minute details and helping me load and unload the trailer. I know I would not have been able to this myself. I also owe thanks to Mike McGreevy and Bruce and Stacy Jones for allowing me to use their extra boats, allowing me to provide more attendees with a chance to get out on the water sooner!
We did have a bit of a teaser outing the week before Busse Woods. This meetup was organized by me through my newly adopted meetup group, Float Your Boat: Chicago Kayaking. It was meant not meant to be a “boat share”, as many meetups are. I had 3 boats for rent. Unfortunately, the rain got in the way in many respects. I arrived at around 10 AM, waited a few hours, paddled once when the rain let up, let others paddle, waited a couple more hours, packed up and went home. It was good to just work out the boat-carrying muscles, anyway!
Busse Woods was a totally different story. The day started early - around 8AM. A little muddy from the rain the couple of days before, but it cleared up JUST in time for this event. It was sunny and the forecast looked great. We unloaded 7 boats from our Get Out ‘n Do It trailer, then the bean bag game, the table, the dining tent, and cooler. We just finished getting everything setup when people started to arrive. We officially started at 9AM.
I was able to give attendees a briefing on kayaking safety, fit them into PFD’s (life preservers) and the boats, before bringing them out into the lake. The groups were 6-8 and there were a number of kids & teens, which was cool. It’s nice to see the younger crowd stay outdoors versus eyes glued to a TV set or game console! Kudos to the parents! We generally paddled an hour to hour-and-a-half, to be fair to those waiting. I went out 3 times before I had to stop and break for lunch and just get recharged.
Later in the day, the wind started to pick up and it became more difficult to paddle the usual counter-clockwise route. We needed to change to clockwise, so we could take advantage of the wind being at our backs on the way out and paddling along the shore, protected from the wind on the way in.
Our last paddle, we went under Higgins Rd., dodging some of the construction rigging under the bridge, to get up into Salt Creek. The water was high and allowed us access where it is sometimes not possible to go. On a small island we saw a little gosling and its parents struggling with a couple of other geese - bullies, I’m guessing.
It was a great event to kick off the season - 42 attended. The RSVP’s were much higher - 82 Yes initially - that was intimidating!
Cheers and see you on the water, or on the trail, or on the path - anywhere outdoors!
Victor
