Monday, March 12, 2012

Stratosfear - GC7BF1, Lake Guntersville State Park

Since we have purchased our kayaks, we are learning our boats on area lakes and Lake Guntersville is one of our favorite places to be.  This cache was also another reason we brought our boats here for the weekend. 

We did some area “land” caches before we put the boats in the water, hoping the day would warm up a bit first.  So, by mid-morning we were paddling towards this cache.  It was only 4 miles “as the crow flies” and we thought we had plenty of time.  Since we are new to the game, we didn’t factor in the many turns in Town Creek or the fact that there was a college BassMasters fishing tournament going on and the many boats it would bring in to the normal crowd of fishermen on the water.

We found ourselves paddling into the wind and dodging the many boats the tournament brought in.  We are also noticing all the damage from the April tornados, which detroyed so much of the beauty of the park.  We kept to the creek sides and really enjoyed the wildlife we saw.  There were turtles sunning on the many downed trees, herons fishing, eagles soaring above us, a beaver, and the many other birds we chased off by coming near.  The little black birds, that would run across the water, were hilarious to watch!




Our last mile, we poured on the extra energy to get there as soon as we could.  We found a good point to beach our kayaks and started our search.  The coords were bouncing a bit, so we resorted to the hint and found it quickly!  OCP opened the container and was surprised at the amount of water in the ammo can.  But, since it has been there undisturbed for over 3 years, it was understandable because the island looks like it keeps a fair amount of water on it at times.  We congratulate each other on surviving the first extensive water trip and rehydrate before tackling the 6 miles it will take to get BACK to the truck!  Thanks for our first kayak adventure and a tough cache to get to! We had a blast!