Onion River Exploration Project: Sand Hill at Waldo

Sand Hill Crane

Day 1 (5/27/12)

I hope 2012 goes better than 2011 as far as Kayaking goes. Last year I only blogged eight times. I think that we may have gone out a couple more times but either nothing all that exciting happened or I just didn’t blog about it. This year seems to be off to a better start already. We really should have been out earlier since we had eighty degree temperatures in March but with school and everything else that goes on in the spring we had to wait until today. Because of Memorial Day weekend we decided to stay away from the more popular places and go to Waldo. When we left our house there was a slight breeze and beautiful temperatures. Perhaps because of the wind direction and lake layout when we arrived at Waldo the wind was quite strong. We are always a little concerned when the wind is at our back because we know that eventually we will have to return. We set out with much anticipation. As Waldo sometimes is, it was somewhat smelly. The water was high and muddy from the recent rains but we managed to spot some carp throughout the flowage. We soon encountered another problem with the high winds; it was hard to drift slowly to sneak up on wildlife. Soon after entering the river Eileen spotted the head of a sand hill crane bobbing through the tall grass on the bank. We tried to slow down to watch it and get some pictures but because of the wind it was impossible to slow down much less stay in one place so it took off and we only got a couple of fleeting shots of it. It was soon evident that the wind was not the only issue we were going to have to contend with. As I said before the recent rains had swollen the river and the slow easy current that we usually had to contend with had increased in speed and volume. Under other circumstances the fast current would have been fun but when you are hoping to drift up on some photo opportunities it can be trying. As we anticipated when we got back to the flowage our speed decreased considerably when we had to make our way back against the wind. We soon found that if you weren’t going forward you were going back. If you stop paddling to take a picture you would start blowing back and sideways before you got your picture taken. That said it was a beautiful May day. We can’t wait to get back out.