Mrs SeeKPeeKRs and I started our day by me picking her up at her house around 6:15 or so. We knew that we wanted to get an early start on our adventure. Our goal for the day was to head to "Spice Creek small boat". We drove up to the end of Calvert Ferry Landing Road, just west of Dunkirk and hopped out of the car happy to start. After grabbing all of our gear, we will the kayak down to the shoreline, about 500 yards total along a trail. The trail wasn't the best near the end, with the large ruts, but we made out okay getting the boat into the water.
We got started on the 1.3 mile, as the crow flies, paddle just around 7 am. It was a great time to be out on the river. We had a slight breeze, out of the south, in our face. But that breeze kept us cool on the July morning. Off to the eastern side of the tributary, I spotted a male bald eagle flying and just a minute or two later we saw his mate sitting in a tree and were able to snap a couple of photos of her.
We continued our paddle for about 45 minutes and we finally finished crossing the Patuxent. We started into the main tributary on the western side and spotted several blue herons, ospreys as well as a pretty big turtle hustling to the water. After 20 minutes of meandering through the tributary, our GPSr's switched into "feet" and we knew that we were getting close. We came around to the northwest side of the island and decided to "beach" the kayak there.
Beaching the kayak was a little hard. The island itself had a steep incline to go up and we couldn't just let the kayak sit where it was or it may have gone off without us. So after climbing out, I pulled the kayak up the incline about 20 feet to brace the kayak against a tree. At that point we knew we were close. In fact we were within 100 ft of the cache itself. And after maybe 3 minutes or so, we had the cache in hand. At that point we rejoiced. We knew that we had conquered the true rating of a "5 star" terrain. We signed the log and snapped several pictures and just, like I mentioned earlier, soaked it in.
Our trip back was just like the trip there. A nice leisure paddle of about 1.4 miles as it turned out to be. What a great day! I really don't know how I will be able to top this in geocaching, but I know that I am going to try somehow.
To those interested the youtube video below shows the adventure. If you don't like spoilers, then maybe you should look away near the end. But honestly you have to get out there to really appreciate it anyway. Enjoy! I know that I definitely did.
