Saturday's first official trip of the season was once again at Busse Woods. Our group of seventeen included longtime and founding members, as well as new members and guests. The meeting time was 10:00 but when I arrived at 9:15, almost half the group was already there. This group was anxious to get out on the water!

The wind was already fairly strong by the time we launched so we enjoyed a tailwind paddling out into the lake. A few of us were very close to a Great Blue Heron, but other than Mallards and Canada Geese the only other wildlife I saw was the Cook County Sheriff's crew cleaning up the park. I noticed the water level was high in comparison to one of the dams, and that let us paddle through the cattails coming in to the place we usually stop for lunch. This area usually doesn't have enough water to get through, but this year there was just enough to do it.

The lunch stop was a welcome break, with many of us trying to adapt ourselves to the cockpit of a kayak for the first time this year. Part of excitement of spring paddling is simply trying to stand up after spending a couple of hours in the boat, and after success with that skill we made our way over to the shelter to eat. And eat we did. In true Prairie Coast Paddlers style, we easily had enough food for a week on our day trip, and an impressive percentage of this was chocolate-based. It was windy out there; we needed our energy...

After lunch some of the group headed for Salt Creek but I headed back in with others. That evening many of us met up again at Geneva Kayak's Customer Appreciation Night, where we had the opportunity to promote our club and hear about what they have coming up this year. Tom Bamonte also gave another presentation on his trips to Georgian Bay for those who may have missed him at Canoecopia last month.

It was good to see everyone again and I'm looking forward to a lot more paddling this summer. Steve K has posted some pictures from this paddle and I'll add to that soon.

Steve