Watuaga River

• 4.68 miles
• 2:01 duration
• 2 geocaches found (1 FTF)
• 1 geocache replaced

Last night I got a text from LakeBum (Rob) saying that Pork n Beans (Jane) wanted to paddle this morning. Of course, I was interested! Any chance to get on the river.

We launched from the Blevins Road boat ramp at 9:45. There was still a bit of fog on the river, which is always a beautiful, peaceful sight. The weather was perfect for a float. Not too hot, not too cool, with a mixture of sun and clouds. The river was a little fuller than last week.

Today’s was a quick, fairly uneventful trip. We only made three stops. The first was so that Jane and I could claim First to Find (FTF) on a cache that Rob hid last week. The second was so that I could replace a cache I had hidden last year that was swept away in the spring storms.

The third stop was for me to log a challenge cache hidden by Rob earlier this year. To qualify for this cache, you must have found at least 100 “boat required” geocaches. Before today, I had found 110 caches with the “boat required” attribute.

One interesting sight today was a groundhog swimming across the river in front of us. We weren’t sure if it was an otter, beaver or groundhog until I saw it exit the river. I suspected it might be a groundhog, because normally an otter or beaver will dive under water when it senses danger and this little guy kept his head above water the whole way across. Once he climbed onto the shore, I could see that he didn’t have a flat tail like a beaver.

We exited the river at 11:45 and I was home in plenty of time to do laundry. Yea!

You can view a short video of our trip here.