On Tuesday, girlfriends, Garnet and Charyl, and I went kayaking at Rock Cut State Park in Rockford, IL.  We had gone last year and after we had to force Garnet into the thing and out in the water, she just fell in love with kayaking.  She and Charyl both now own their own kayaks.  I rented one for two hours.

Off we went into the great outdoors on water.  If you have never gone kayaking, you really should do it at least once.  It is such a wonderful feel to be on the water in this vessel that moves with you.  You must be careful not to make any quick moves or you can turn over easily.

We decided to row toward the distant shore to this orange thing that we spotted.  About halfway they had to stop to take a break.  We admired the beauty of the trees and their shadows and all the wonderful birds we were seeing.  Must be bird week for me, huh?

There were the loveliest blue herons all around.  They would take off and fly over the lake to the next good looking spot to pose for us.  Garnet made up her mind that she would get closer to the heron.  Sure enough as soon as she got close the heron buzzed her, squawking like a goose.  I was sure it was going to skim her head but it missed.  She said later it had not really come near her, it was just from my perspective that I thought the bird buzzed her.

As we neared the target shoreline we realized that the orange thing we had seen was on a fishing boat and we changed our target.  We came around a little bend and there was the cutest little box turtle on a log that was sticking out of the water.  Charyl shot a couple of pictures of him with her iPhone.  Then she shot one of another heron nearby

.

Out in the middle of the lake we decided to flotilla.  Charyl was in the middle so she held on to us until we got settled and then we just hung out in the middle of the lake being as happy as old girlfriends could be.

Charyl is big on stories and so we each told a story.  Her subject was “when you thought you might die”, don’t ask me why.  I told them of my car accident, Garnet told of one of her car accidents and Charyl told us about the night she woke up and thought she was having a heart attack.  Where does she come up with these subjects?

While we were in our flotilla formation, several goose families came swimming across the lake.  I counted 27 babies and 8 adults in the group.  Charyl had to make a movie with her iPhone (gosh, I gotta get one of those).  We stayed still and watched the geese cross the lake and go up to the shoreline.  One male stayed behind until everyone was out of the water and then joined them.

We made our way back across the water dodging fishermen, a pontoon, other kayakers and a group of young women who were squealing with delight.

After getting out of the water and returning the kayak, I changed my clothes to something more appropriate for lunch at J M K Nippon where we had a lovely lunch and a beer.

Garnet was quite taken with the camouflage boulder in front of J M K Nippon.