Aaaahhhh! Wonderful day! We headed down to Rancho Seco Park for some geo-kayaking. We had the whole place almost to ourselves. We counted two fishermen and one family at the picnic area. They are behaved and did not interfere with our time on the water. Our goal was to find 6 caches. One of them would give us a square on the California Fizzy Challenge. We were successful in finding all the caches.
The wildlife was incredible. The dragonflies were there in droves until I pulled out the camera. We had one blue heron that surprised us both and flew up right in front of Larry--no cameras ready. He (or she) was absolutely huge. I'm not sure how we missed seeing it but maybe it was couched down in the reeds. This was the first time we have ever heard a heron squawking! Someone suggested later that maybe there was a nest near us. That would explain why we didn't see the Heron until the last minute and why it was trying to attract our attention as it flew away.
Besides the dragonflies that were black and blue (beautiful colors), we saw some drab ones and a few small purple ones. At one point a few butterflies fluttered by and the red-wing blackbirds attracted our attention often. We couldn't be distracted too much, though, because the creeping water plants were taking over! We could go into some of the outlets, but trying to get out was another story. It was weird! They didn't want to let us go!
There were plenty of egrets--they even hung around for pictures. That was one of the good points for going out by ourselves. Normally we are in the back of the pack and any wildlife has been startled away by the first kayakers to approach. Today we were at the front, middle, and back so we had full up close and personal contact with the egrets. We did get some good pictures of them flying away.
We had fish jumping all around us--certainly an argument for a webcam on the kayak! They were all different sizes. Larry claims to have see one with a girth of about 4-5 inches. That equates to a nice size fish. One of the fishermen said he was fishing for bass. If there are bass in that lake, one could have been "that big". At one point, I saw a fish literally walk on water. He came up and scooted along the water for about 2 feet. It was weird to watch but it was definitely a fish and not something else.
As I said, we found all the caches we had intended to find. We replaced three geocache. We had advance permission for two of them. Several people had reported "Did Not Find" so we expected the caches to be missing. We gave it our best effort to find them before we replaced them. The third one, we replaced and notified the owner that we were pretty sure it was missing. We are waiting for their approval.
It was a beautiful day! We could have stayed around longer but the sun was getting hotter and our arms were getting tired. I learned later, that my sunscreen was not protecting me as much as I thought it was. Time to change my sunscreen, or try to remember to apply it more often.
We had fish jumping all around us--certainly an argument for a webcam on the kayak! They were all different sizes. Larry claims to have see one with a girth of about 4-5 inches. That equates to a nice size fish. One of the fishermen said he was fishing for bass. If there are bass in that lake, one could have been "that big". At one point, I saw a fish literally walk on water. He came up and scooted along the water for about 2 feet. It was weird to watch but it was definitely a fish and not something else.
As I said, we found all the caches we had intended to find. We replaced three geocache. We had advance permission for two of them. Several people had reported "Did Not Find" so we expected the caches to be missing. We gave it our best effort to find them before we replaced them. The third one, we replaced and notified the owner that we were pretty sure it was missing. We are waiting for their approval.
It was a beautiful day! We could have stayed around longer but the sun was getting hotter and our arms were getting tired. I learned later, that my sunscreen was not protecting me as much as I thought it was. Time to change my sunscreen, or try to remember to apply it more often.
No comments:
Post a Comment