Stream Team Picnic – 7.23

Danelle and I went to the annual Stream Team picnic held at Meramec State Park. Its always held on the last Saturday in July. This year, the temperature was quite warm. Danelle’s parents were worried about the kids with the excessive heat, so they kept the kids at their house. Danelle and I were just a couple heading to a party. We were looking forward to hanging out in the heat. Danelle was slightly worried that I was going to be bored in the morning. The party part didn’t really get started until around lunch time, but she was to be there around 9:30am for some training. I told her not to worry as I packed our canoe on top of the van. I had a plan to be paddling all morning while she was in class.

I went a couple miles upstream during the morning. Since I was by myself, I used my kayak paddle and sat in the middle of the boat. This made it easy to control and balance the boat. I had the perfect amount of water for a hard upstream paddle and a potentially casual paddle back downstream. I passed many people two times that morning, once going upstream, and once coming back down!

When I got back to where I started, the Stream Team people had a tent set up with bugs in it. They were demonstrating to anybody interested different bugs in the stream. I spent a few minutes at the tent before I moved all my equipment up to the parking lot to pack it all away.

At the celebration, there were tons of door prizes to help raise money for Stream Teams.

Lots of fun things happen at this event every year. There are several canoe races of which, Danelle and I brought home 2 first place trophies and one second place. The food and company were great.

 

A more official report of the event.