Mendota memories

We just got back from a great trip to Wisconsin. It has been almost 11 months since we left! Wow how time has flown. It was so great to see all our friends again, by the end of the trip we were certainly questioning why we ever left. We miss everybody more than ever now. We certainly feel very blessed to have all of our Madison friends.

Instead of making a mega-post with all our ~150 pics of the trip, we decided that we would make a few vignette posts about different activities over the weekend and spread them out over the next week or so, not necessarily in chronological (or regular logical for that matter) order.


On Sunday we decided a fun activity was in order so we headed down to the Union Terrace for a little canoeing action. Surprisingly, in our 6 years in Madison we had never ventured on to Mendota in a canoe, even though it is convenient and cheap.


Here I am all ready to go waiting for the tide to come in and take us out.
The canoe seemed stable enough at this point (on land), but when we first got in the water it was a little tippier than other canoes I have been in (this is foreshadowing).

Matt and Jessica came with their trusty Kayak.

Soon Mark, Carol and Kirk came and slipped their canoes into the slightly green water.
We then proceeded to join up with the other members of our canoe crew Dave and Marta (for a parallel account of events please check out their post on our sister blog)

We headed east to meet D & M as they were struggling against a good headwind. After getting almost to James Madison Park (in the background of the pic below) we spotted their little red canoe about 200+ yards from shore.. we headed out to meet them.

Merriment was had upon our meeting, but almost as soon as we turned around into the headwind in the middle of the lake we noticed things were getting a little bumpy. The calm Union Terrace waters were no more and we were popping up and down on some big waves... The aluminum bottom of out boat was smacking on the bottom of the water in between waves and we would occasionally get sprayed.... at this point all I wanted was to head in to shore.

We looked over and saw that the kayak and 2 canoes hanging out.. we looked again and the Kirk/Carol/Mark canoe was overturned in the water... As soon as we verbalized this to eachother we too were overcome by a rouge wave and overturned in the water... Dave and Marta (the only canoe afloat) came to assist us while Matt and Jessica offered moral support to the other 3 in the water.

We were in the water for like 5 minutes tops struggling to get back into the canoe when we noticed a boat coming to assist us. Evidently we had overturned directly in front of the UW rescue boat tower (lucky us). We found out later that the elegance and grace of our overturning drew applause from the people in the tower. We were happy to see them for certain. No more struggling to get back into a waterlogged canoe!

They picked us up first... we had our camera in a dry bag and for posterity's sake Roxanne photographed the second rescue. I think with some effort we may have been both been able to get back into ours as it didnt turn fully over, but I think Mark Carol and Kirk had little chance of righting their vessel, as it was completely submerged.

Below, Mark is seen handling the rescue pole.

They got us all on board and offered to relaunch our canoes for us or take us back, we opted for the latter option. We had all the canoeing we needed for that day.

Back on shore we ate a couple of brats and laughed about the whole thing.

There was only 1 casualty a chunk of my toenail came off as I was thrown from the canoe..and alas a chunk of my pride too.