Onion River Exploration Project: Turd on a Shoe

Turd On A Shoe

Day 7 (7/26/12)

I had mentioned in my last blog that we are experiencing one of the worst droughts in recent history.This week we had a little break in the weather conditions. Last night it rained a good portion of the night and we got just less than two inches. It was still quite warm so we decided to take another trip up to Gerber Lake. Some days you can go to the lake and things seem uneventful ,still fun but just not that exciting. Today was not one of those days. As soon as we got to the lake we saw a beaver. Of course when we got the cameras out he decided to disappear. As we were backing out from the landing Eileen spotted a small baby turtle. Upon future observation she noticed it was sitting on a floating shoe (or at least we hope it was floating). She managed to photograph it for some time. It was so cute she did not want to scare it by getting to close so we just continued on our merry way. It was still very hot, we keep saying we are going to get out earlier but we never do, so we found what shade we could and Eileen started setting up and photographing her fairy habitats while I fished. She had built some new houses and was excited about finding environments to put them in. Because of the time of day fishing was pretty nonexistent but I had fun throwing lures around. After a couple of hours we started hearing thunder rumbling in the distance. It did not seem like any immediate threat, it was still sunny with a few clouds, but we started meandering our way back to the boat landing. On our way I noticed splash on the far side of the lake and noticed a osprey lifting off from the surface. We tried to get pictures of it and Eileen was kind of successful but my old camera has a hard time with the fast speed stuff. On our way back to the landing we checked for the turtle but he was gone. We did catch a glimpse of the beaver one last time but again had no opportunity to take a picture. On most days this would have been the end of the adventure but not today. As I said earlier we had heard thunder in the distance. As we packed up the Yak Hauler the clouds started closing in and the thunder got more intense. We no more than got on the road and it started to rain. Not the nice easy rain but the type of rain that you see coming in sheets. We managed to drive out it for awhile only to see another band crossing in front of us. It was awesomely beautiful to watch but not so much fun to drive through with two kayaks on top. When we turned east for our final leg of the journey we once again drove out of it so we stopped to get some pictures. It soon caught us and now the wind was blowing straight out of the north and managed to blow one of the kayaks off the edge of the rack. Again we caught a bit of a break and quickly straightened the kayak and tightened the straps. Just as we were finishing it hit use again with blinding fury. With little visibility and a huge side wind we limped back to town. I had left some windows open so when we got home in spite of the heavy rains we made a dash for the house. Fortunately little had blown in. Then the power went off. As these things go the rain stopped about ten minutes later and the neighbors gathered to discuss their experiences with the storm. I looked at the rain gauge we had gotten an inch and half of rain in less than a half hour.