Crusing Down the River

At the end of last summer I had been eyeing this cache that hadn't been found yet.  It was a couple of weeks old but the trick was it was on a small island in the middle of the river.  This area is a popular spot where you can rent a canoe or tubes and float down the river.  I was thinking on how I could get to it but I was missing one think.  If I parked to float down the river I would of had about a 15 mile hike to get back to the car from the pull out point.  I didn't have another person to park their car at the pull out point so we would have a ride back to the start of it all.


So I got to looking at the maps and the boundary's of the state park and it looked like I could get to it by following the edge of the river.  One small problem.  The terrain next to the river had very steep slopes and a lot of bluffs.  So I did what any other stupid person would do.  Tackle the terrain for 2 miles to get as close to the cache as I could.

As I started off on the trail, I ran into some rock climbers and some repellers.  It was a perfect day to be out in the woods, and really cool to stop and watch some of these people.

 As I moved a lot down the trail you could tell few people had traveled this far in, but yet I ran into a few more groups of climbers.

This was about the end of the trail and the terrain got very ruff.  I started to have to find animal trail to get to the top of some of the bluffs just to have to climb right back down them again.  Still this was a amazing park and I think few see these bluffs.  I finally got luckily and found a broken animal trail with a lot less ups and downs.  Which about a half mile of that I finally had to climb down the last bluff to a low spot and hike back out to the river.  As I got as close as I could before I had to cross the water, I found a fallen log next to a small beach like area.  I decided to take a break for a bit there.

As I was sittng there I could here people coming down the river and of course they spotted me.  This is when my trip got kind of interesting.  They had to stop right there and they came over to me.  One lady sat down on my log I was sitting on and started jabbering away.  She was drunk.  Then the questions came.  What are you doing out here? Are you homeless?  Are you some sort of murderer hiding out in the woods.  They just where not buying my hiking story.  Thankfully they didn't stay long and it was time to get wet.  I stripped down to my shorts and just my GPSr and headed for the small "island" in the above picture.  At first it got very deep, then very shallow, then deep again.  As I got near the island I saw another group floating down the river but they weren't interested in me at all.

Once I reached the island all the trees and bushes where a mess and hard to bushwack threw, but I finally was able to wiggle my way to the cache container.  Of course when I found it, I found a little trail that came from the other side of the island that was very easy to pass threw.  I signed the log sheet and then headed back over to where I left my camel-pak and other hiking supplys.  I decided to take another break and started doing some thinking on how I could find a way back that was easier.

This is where I started to devise a plan using the river to make it back.  I finished off the rest of my water in my pack, I didn't realize how warm it was till I ran out of water.  That gave me the idea that I could put my electronics inside of the battler of the bag, to keep them dry.  Once I put them in, I used the straw to blow air into the bladder and fill it up with air.

I then put the pack on my back, and went into the river.  This made a make shift floating device.  I just did a back float and got into some current and let the river do all the work.  Which this worked out very well, I got to see those bluffs I had been climbing up and down on.  I think by this point all the people on the river today were down stream and I had the whole place to myself.  What a great way to finish up the cache hunt.

I noticed by this time it was past the time I told my wife I would call her by.  It took a lot longer to hike out there than I had planned on.  But my cell phone didn't work out here at all.  Thankfully she didn't freak out that I finally called about an hour and a half late.

As I floated down stream I hit some shallow spots that had lots of rocks.  Those spots kind of hurt the legs a bit, but it still was a fun trip.  When I finally made it back to the truck I had traveled 4.67  miles with 976 feet of elevation gain.  Which is a lot of elevation for Iowa.  Two months later the cache owner made another trip down the river and planted two more caches.  Those I can't reach from the park so I'll have to the floating down the river thing.  I'm looking forward to attempting those this up coming summer.