St. Croix Tri

You've probably seen some of my posts about 'Grandpa Adventures.' These are the kind of things I wish I might have done with a grandpa if I had one in my life when I was younger. I'm happy to say that several grandchildren have risen to the bait. When I discussed with Marcus just what kind of challenge he was up for - he went for the max.  I gave him several combinations of distance and activity, the longest of which was an 'Adventure Triathlon' that included kayaking, biking and camping and was the length of a marathon - 26.5 miles.

We packed up food and gear in our little inflatable kayak and put in at Nelson's Landing on the upper St. Croix.

We started out on a perfect North Woods afternoon. This is looking up-river from one of the many island campsites we checked out.

Water level was quite low. If you look in the foreground of this shot you'll see the bottom - six inches down, and we were in the middle of the river! We had to remove the skeg because it was constantly dragging on rocks and sand.

We paddled through miles of class 2 rapids. Marcus got pretty good at reading the water.

We stopped at the ruins of an old 1890's 'paint mine' site deep in the woods. All that's left are foundations and the old water wheel. We got some drinking water from the springs that feed the stream.

We finally settled on a campsite about ten miles down from where we started. Looking upstream, we could see four or five islands.

We made dinner and a campfire and watched the sun go down.

We reached the Hwy 70 bridge about noon on day two. We had hidden our bikes by the landing. We then rode fourteen miles on back roads to Nelson's Landing where the car was. Twenty-six and a half miles under human power.   Should I mention that Marcus slept all the way home?   This was not from trip-induced fatigue but from the greatest challenge of all, Grandpa's snoring.