hi welcome to day one of our big camping kayaking adventure I'm going to do
something a little different for me which is a vlog type thing I know some
people really dig those so it's going to be lightly edited anyway day one is
Friday we're just getting set up here at the campsite our original plan was to
kayak tomorrow Saturday stay at this campsite Saturday night and then kayak
the rest of the route Sunday however we decided that we will camp tonight
and then get up early and go up to the kayaking spot where we're launching off
leave the tent here and then come back we'll camp
pick everything up and then take it with us tomorrow when we leave or Sunday I
guess so anyway right now bugs are everywhere it's driving me nuts
I mean it's camping but these are like the devil bugs. tent. my friend Seth who you
might know from unreal weather I'll introduce him when he shows up later
he's going to hammock camp between those two trees right there
so it should be a good time if we can get some bug spray and some smoke going
and deal with all these things
hello pretty sweet so we just had our first night camping on Friday so no
Saturday morning yeah I slept in the tent down there and it was like I was
sleeping on a bulge like that so everywhere I went my back was curved up
like that cell is pretty uncomfortable and then we had some neighbors who were
a little loud in terms of arguing and making up so did his hammock
it rained on us but not too bad so now we're getting ready to go kayak hey we
are at the river this is Seth
we've just got all loaded up going into the Platte we are up at North Bend
Nebraska and so it's going to be about 38 miles back down to two rivers where
we camped last night and hopefully that'll take us about nine hours if
we're good I suppose so storm later on so hopefully
we can get there before that oh yeah so we will kind of stop along the way and
see how our progress is based on the chart that we have the whole point of
this trip is one to kayak to to be outside doing stuff and but three to
take pictures unfortunately the sky is really cloudy right now so hopefully we
either get lots of fog for cool pictures or clears up we can actually get
something worth watching
you
we've been kayaking for 25 minutes and that right there that bridge is where we
started from so it feels like a lot longer than that when we just turned
around and saw that bridge it's like now geez I'll show you what we're dealing
with we have to constantly navigate around sandbars and I mean shallow
there's sand underneath here some places it's only like a foot deep yes you just
bottomed out there anyway that's what the Platte River is it's a braided river
and it's so wide and shallow the sandbars just all over the place so you
have to navigate around and that's why this was never a viable option for any
of the people coming West or anything like that it's just you can't transport
anything on it from what I read you know Native Americans didn't even use it that
much because canoeing is just not practical so we just stopped for our
first break we made it yeah just a little over an hour averaging about four
miles per hour so we're going I guess kind of what I expected yeah stop to the
sandbar and thought it was pretty cool shot here so we're doing some camera
stuff otherwise it's going great my boat kind of fills with water because it's a
sit on top boat I'll show you so sit on top boat and so they put these scupper
plugs in and that keeps the water from coming back up well it also means that
it doesn't drain so I have to keep pulling the plug on them and draining
the boat every so often and so it's made my my legs kind of cold with the breeze
blowing off them and and the water splashing over but nothing to complain
about really enjoying the cloudy weather kind
of makes it feel like more of an adventure so it's fun time
get the pressure at the line of scrimmage
hey Seth yeah I can't wait till we see the Argonaut it's a bald eagle
chilling in the tree up there
how we made it to our lunch stop doing some dehydrated food that was 15
nautical miles but going back and forth and over the sandbars and getting stuck
it took us a little over four hours I think that's what we were hoping for so
we're on schedule but it that last 45 minutes was tough slidin we were both
ready to get some food so yeah taking a quick break to stretch out resituated
because we were both kind of but heavy and so that would catch in the sand a
lot easier on the back so you're having to struggle against that so if we keep
it more flat hopefully we can travel over the sandbars a little easier 3.9
miles per hour not as fast as I hope as expecting five but yeah well 15 point
two miles he says that's the other thing we had a decision we had a discussion
that we needed to put the cameras away and stuff like that and really focus on
it can't sit job done cuz we have a long ways to go still
yes so Seth is refilling this little jet boil with the camel pack that thing
doesn't take very long at all five minutes to heat up and I'm having my
breakfast skillet lead and eat this morning anyway so this dehydrated eggs
and sausage and whatever else haven't tried it yes we're still really hot been
holding it against my body to keep it keep myself warm so we're gonna make
some coffee because if God what did you say about sixty degrees it's pretty
chilly yeah and we're wet and so the wind is
blowing there's we missed it on pretty much the whole trip yeah hats were
dripping off mist and anyway so we're going to try and warm up with a little
bit of coffee and some hot food and then we'll get going
again I guess
all right it is 6:00 p.m. we just made it to the second landing took a short
break or a second checkpoint we have one more this was nine nautical miles and we
made it how much time okay so check point two two and a half hours set two
to four hours so good time this next one is seven point four miles then they're
saying three to four the last one was nine miles so might be a little rougher
I don't know it's getting dark I said 6:00 p.m. the Sun is probably setting
soon it's been cloudy we can't see anything sorry I'm from candy my mouth
get some sugar so sorry I have to deal with that but we're just trying to get
we might just have to see if we can catch up to it so we saw this umbrella
at checkpoint 2 and it blew away before we could get to it and it got stuck so
now we're going to attempt to rescue it
the action is very intense seth approaches the umbrella he frees it from
his bindings oh god I might need that tonight during the storm oh you suck
yeah the wind is behind this now along the bank to shore it up to prevent a
roading earlier on we saw just concrete everywhere and with like trees it's like
how'd the concrete get there must been so old before the trees came that dumped
it over anyway then it was tires a whole bunch of tires and now we're seeing
people used cars all over the place we're seeing all these junk cars that
people dump over I assume it's to shore up the land I can't imagine it's just to
get rid of a car maybe it's so old as an insurance claim back then but there's
another one right there at this point we realized that the storm was coming
faster than expected the Sun was setting and we still had about 2 miles left in
the hardest sandiest part of the river so we put the cameras away and pushed
ourselves as hard as we could he started raining around 8 p.m. and the
Sun finally set not much later lightning started rolling in several miles away at
nightfall being on a river in the dark that has sand you have to navigate
around while reigning with lightning and having
just paddled 30 miles is not a place we want it to be we were in such a hurry to
get there that we didn't even stop to get our headlamps earlier we couldn't
get them out now because they were in dry bags and everything else in the bags
would have got soaked when we would hit a sandy spot we didn't try to paddle
through like earlier we just jumped out of the boats and drugged them trying to
crouch low and keep our metal paddles horizontal so they didn't become
lightning rods we were desperate just to get on dry ground
we flicked on the lights on our phones and constantly checked the map so that
we knew when the bank of the campsite started finally we hit the shoreline of
the park but there was no boat ramp just a four-foot high cliff of broken
concrete with every stroke we got further and further from our tent
finally we just said screw it I hopped in the water which went up to my stomach
and held the kayaks in place while Seth scrambled up the banks he started
pulling bags off to lighten the boats then we finally lifted them up and out
of the water then we were faced with the prospect of porting our boats back a
mile to the tent fully loaded in the worsening storm Seth
suggested hiding them in the trees and just carrying the bags so that's what we
did we went to all grocery bag Hercules on the gear and carried it with our
cramped hands back to the tent in an act of blind determination Seth tried to set
up his hammock and rain tarp for 30 minutes in an absolute downpour of cold
rain with lightning crackling directly overhead he eventually conceded defeat
and came in the tent which was now pooling with water realizing that we
wouldn't be getting any sleep with 30 more miles of river the following day we
surrendered to nature and called someone to pick us up while we huddled under an
emergency blanket to stay warm thanks a lot for watching this vlog we hope you
enjoyed it as much as we did making it for you if you did like it please give
it a thumbs up and as always so you don't miss out on anything else please
subscribe to the flare Corp media channel
thanks a lot and see you next time