“Spend as much time as possible on mountains, in small boats, or otherwise out in the weather; if you never get wet, cold, exhausted or scared, you won’t properly appreciate being dry, warm, rested and safe.” ~ Peter Jay

"I’m an adventuring river rat at heart. Put me on a floating piece of driftwood and I’m happy." ~ Christina Glauner

"There’s folly and foolhardiness on one side and daring and calculation on the other." ~ C.S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower novels

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Whiskey Gulch

Well, I would have added a post sooner, but blogger has not been too willing to upload to my ftp server with godaddy.com. The problem appears to have resolved itself though.

After work on Monday, I went down to the causeway connecting Pierre to La Framboise Island and put in off the boat ramp there.This boat ramp can be busy at times with fisherman, but there is a narrow part of the ramp on the opposite side of the dock that a paddler could use to put in.

I didn't have any particular destination in mind on Monday, just to get a short evening paddle in.
I ended up turning around after a brief exploration of what Google Earth calls Whiskey Gulch. The entrance can be seen below.
I've never before made it very far up without running out of water, but it's still April so I decided to give it a try.
I even managed to get past the above fallen tree/branch. Though the bow o my kayak got a bit muddy from the "stream" bank.
I didn't make it much farther and the gulch doesn't even continue much farther either.
But I still enjoyed the short distance I could sneak up into it. On the way back to the boat ramp, i managed to capture this photo of a pair of ducks in flight.
Also, this picture of goose taking off.
I was surprised about how close I was able to get to this goose before he took off. It wasn't even the kayak that spooked him. So i have two more pictures to answer the question of why geese fly.
Scruff behaved himself and stayed in the boat until we passed the goose on the little island next to the causeway. Then he couldn't help himself anymore. Though the one picture of us in Whiskey Gulch has him looking at me as if he is thinking "this doesn't go anywhere idiot." ;)

The trip was a short one; Measuring only 2.2 miles on my gps.

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