A Beautiful Day On The River

Today the weather was nearly perfect.  It was sunny, in the low 70's and very low humidity.  I had a haircut this morning and when I arrived back home, my husband Mike had the canoe ready to go.  I had wanted to go for a canoe ride ever since Sarah and the kids took the canoe out a couple weeks ago.   http://cabincountess.blogspot.com/2013/08/our-traditional-august-outing.html

They paddled, but we did not. We took an old peoples trip on the river.  This is what Mike did.  He bought a canoe mount and installed it on the canoe, then he mounted a small trolling motor and connected it to a battery and off we went.  No paddling necessary.

When we first took off I didn't think the motor was working.  It was going so slow and with no noise, but it was working, so I sat back and enjoyed the view.  All I needed was a parasol. If we were young and had a lot of energy, we could have paddled faster.  We were heading into the current so that slowed us down a bit.  In fact, the first part of the trip took 65 minutes and the trip back with the current only took 35 minutes.

I wanted so badly to get some photos of an eagle.  The kids had seen one close up.  I saw him too, but he saw us before we saw him and he quickly flew right in front of us before I could get a picture.  Take my word for it, he was gigantic.  I saw this board the other day comparing the wingspan size of different birds.

As we floated along, I did see some fun things.

A water snake

I saw this ahead.  It looked like bubbles in the water

It was hundreds of bugs hovering above the water.

I saw this little tiny cabin

The marks on the trees mark how high the water was this spring.

This is a Kingfisher.  I didn't see the bird behind her until I looked at the photo.  It looks like a Cedar Waxwing.

This old bridge was a Swing Bridge

This bridge was an operating swing bridge.  The Fox River used to be a waterway for big boats which delivered goods to towns along the river.  I looked up the definition of a swing bridge. 

This is what I found:  

A swing bridge is a movable bridge that has as its primary structural support a vertical locating pin and support ring.

The stone structure that the bridge pivots on.

You can see the wheels, gears and the supporting ring.

At this point we turned around and went back.  As I mentioned, the trip back went much faster because we were travelling with the current.  As we approached the boat landing, I saw the cross marking the point Father Marquette met with the Indians. It looked very different from the water. http://cabincountess.blogspot.com/2013/05/legend-of-cross.html 

Legend of the Cross

 It was a nice day, and I finally got my canoe ride.