I have to retype this whole thing because Microsoft Internet Explorer was an asshole and didn’t take the codes properly and wouldn’t reload the page as I had it.  Hopefully Firefox will be a little better.  Anyway…

Stacy and I have talked about going on a canoe trip for a couple of months now and we finally got around to doing it yesterday.  We got up a 7 am and the weather seemed right and we had enough energy so off to Ottawa we went.  We stopped and had Subway and then asked for directions and drove out into the middle of nowhere to get to River Adventures.

We get to this little mobile home and there is a sign that says “Will return around 12:30.”  The problem was that it was 11.  A minute later a guy pulls up in a truck and asks if we need help.  We tell him we want to do a canoe trip and he takes us into the trailer.  We sign up for an 8 mile canoe trip and he makes a few calls and tracks down the lady that runs the place.  He says that she’ll be here in about 15 minutes and leaves.  The lady shows up and we get into a van and drive even further out into the middle of nowhere…down a gravel road and then onto a “tractor path.”  No comment on whether there was a Bigfoot sighting because no one would believe it anyway.  The lady unloads the canoe into the Fox River and tells us that all we have to do is be back before dark (which was 8 hours away) so they don’t have to come looking for us.
And we push off:

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We run into some little problems but not much and the adventure is on.  We pass a couple of old men fishing and we tell them that we’ll send any fish we see to them.  They respond with “to hell with the fish, if you see any women out there send them our way.”  We laughed but sure enough about two miles down we saw a few girls rock diving and swimming.  We forgot to tell them to go down to the old fishermen.

All was calm so we took a couple of pictures:

Then all of a sudden we had to start fighting for our lives.  Crocodiles started coming for the canoe and we saw a shark or two in the distance and the raging white water rapids started carrying us out to sea:

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But that wasn’t even close to the scariest part of the trip.  We then almost became the stars in Deliverance 2…we heard the banjos playing in the background and looked over and saw this in NORTHERN Illinois out in the boondocks:

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We then broke the world record for paddling and got the hell out of there before we had to squeal like a pig or worse.  Watch the movie youngsters and you’ll understand.  We made it to the 6 mile mark in 90 minutes (they said the 8 mile trip would take 3 to 4 hours for the average tandem) and then we hit more trouble.  The wind shifted and went directly into our face and the 4 feet deep water went to 6 feet deep water and the 300 yard wide river become about 900 yards wide and the wind was causing us to zig zag all over as the waves were pushing us backward.  We finally pulled ashore in 2 hours and 45 minutes…still better than average!

They came and got us down at the river and drove us back up to the very top of the hill to our car.  They told us that we could swim in their lake to cool down before leaving.  So we went wading in the lake since we didn’t bring towels to shower or dry off.

But it was a cool place overall.  Sky Dive Chicago was right next door so we watched idiots jump out of a plane while we waded in the lake.  We plan on going back again someday.

Stacy sent me some other pictures from random trips to Chicago that we aren’t sure if she sent before.  So I’m going to repost them and if you have already seen them…too damn bad.

Here we are at the world famous Bean…

Here’s the R2D2 mail box to promote the Star Wars stamps:

Here’s the Holy Cow at Harry Caray’s restaurant:

Last but not least…the greatest invention ever created…an electrified tennis racket to swat mosquitoes and pests…available at Farm & Fleet’s everywhere:

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