Island Hopping II
Rub-a-dub-dub,
Three men in a tub…....
Well, no tub this time!
I had so much fun on my earlier water-caching excursion that I jumped at the invitation to join Bad Duck and Mr. Copper hunting caches via kayaks at Reedsport. We would be greeted by an absolutely gorgeous T-shirt sunny day!
Four caches in our sights today: Beached! Umpqua City Steamboat Island Cliffhanger
Hanging Out at Cliffhanger
On Land at Umpqua City
I had previously found Cliffhanger and Umpqua City via hiking but doing them again by kayak was going to be fun. I’ve been wanting to get more time in a kayak so I could decide what kind to buy for myself this spring.
We broke it into two trips. First put-in was in Winchester Bay where Darren and I received some basic kayaking instructions from Eric. Our first cache, Beached, was only a few hundred feet from our put-in and we shortly had “beached” and found the cache. Back into the calm Umpqua River waters we needed to cross to the north side for the Umpqua City cache. The cache was within 200 feet of the river shore and was found quickly. Returned to the put-in, loaded the kayaks and headed to the Gardiner boat dock for our final two caches. A little over 3 miles for this trip.
Left Gardiner put-in and headed to Steamboat Island battling against the tide a little bit but not too bad. Once again, the cache was easily found then we were off to Cliffhanger….which looked a LONG ways away! It took awhile to get across the river to the north bank again but the time went by rather quickly as we chatted and joked about many things. For me, this would be one of the best parts of the whole experience.
Cliffhanger would be the one difficult cache of the day - so difficult in fact that it could not be found due to soil debris that had fallen from the steep cliffs directly on top of the cache! Emailed the owner for permission to replace the cache. Okay with our old friend, Mackie! We put together a new cache using the brand new water-proof box I had just bought for this outing and whatever swag we could scrape together.
It seems we could have timed the tides a little better as we noticed the tide changed while we had been looking and replacing the cache. We would have to paddle against the tide on the return trip as well! Darren and Eric hugged the shoreline more than I did and as a result I ended up working harder than I needed to…...lesson learned - ALWAYS paddle like a DUCK!
Once back at the truck with kayaks loaded, Darren reported nearly nine miles on the day! It wore me out but it was another great day out caching with good friends. Very cool!
Before heading home we checked out Bedrock’s in Reedsport for some much needed nourishment….of the pizza kind! Sad to discover the geocache inside was missing!