This was a fine attempt at creating a co-meetup group outing to include the FYB: Chicago Area Kayaking and the Northwest Burbs Camping meetup groups. There seem to be plenty of members in common, I’m not one of them. The trip was great. It provided awesome scenery, great paddling and a few extra surprises. Sadly, the trip was not without the totally unnecessary drama.
The trip was scheduled to take place from Thursday through Sunday. Some were going up for all 4 days, like us, and others for 3 days. Thursday turned out to be quite rainy for our trip up. So much so, many backed out of the 4 days and skipped Thursday. Everyone but me and Rachael, Steve and Anita. We all met up near Madison. 
We went up early to stop in Madison so Rachael could take some family photos. It all worked pretty well actually. We all ended up west of Madison at about the same time.
We caravaned through rain toward Wyalusing State Park. The rains began flooding roads and causing detours. It had been coming down pretty hard. We ended up taking about 1/2 hour detour avoiding a few washed out roads. It was looking pretty scary and grim.
We eventually arrived and setup in the rain and mud. Not horrible, since there was grass. We set up pretty quickly, though! Once we did, we had a look around, checked out the water level on the Mississippi River side of the park at the boat ramp. It was very high. I was anxious to get out onto the water, though I wasn’t planning on heading out into the main flow of either the Wisconsin nor Mississippi Rivers. It was just too high and fast.
The rest of the days were spent paddling. This was loads of fun. We got people out on the water to experience kayaking. We all got a bonus sighting of an Eagle’s nest about 1/2 mile north of the launch. The views from the bluffs were pretty great. There was a star gazer event at the parks small observatory. We got to see Saturn and it’s moons and rings from a couple of different telescopes.
When we didn’t have anything to do or at night, the mood changed a bit. Turns out people were “annoying” other people with noise and loud voices. I think people were just very picky. It really pays to know who you are camping with and equally as important people should know YOU before deciding to camp with you! I wouldn’t have gone on the group camping half of this trip knowing some of the people that I met camping. Too different.
The paddling, short hikes, camping amongst friends was all terrific, though!
