St. Croix Day Paddle

Today was fantastic!  Today was beautiful and relaxing.  Today was delicious.  Today my friend Britta and I, along with T, canoed the St. Croix River bordering Minnesota and Wisconsin.  We hit the water just before the lone bell with a couple of small coolers filled with sandwiches, 4 beers, water and chocolate. 

The expanse of the river is so amazing.  It can be really shallow and really deep.  It is so green and the banks are full of vegetation, including tall pines.  We paddled from just north of Copas down to the Boom Site near Stillwater, a distance of nearly 14 miles.  Over the 6 hours of paddling that it took us to complete the length, we swam on sandbars, waded with the canoe in one hand and beer in the other, and tested out a rope swing of grandeur I have not seen before (see post-it deserves its own!).

We stopped once to enjoy a Summit IPA early on under the hot blanket of sunshine.  Later, only a few miles from the take-out we reclined on the ends of the canoe, feet up, to enjoy our second beer of the day.  I have always enjoyed Summit yet today it refreshed me like no other, lips on down.  It could have been the heat, it could have been the surroundings, and it could have just been the extremely well crafted beer.  It felt like more on this day.

Hot days are meant to be spent on the water.  Swimming when you get even the slightest bit warm, conversing when the thought drifts through, and maneuvering a human-powered craft throughout a maze of islands, sunken logs, and sandbars.  

Thanks B-town for a sweet adventure!  What's next?