Chapter 9 - Boys in the Wood

The wind picked up that night, and we awoke to some pretty lame river conditions. We tried to make some distance, but the wind was blowing on our nose and we couldn't make much progress. We decided to stop on a little beach to wait out the wind. 

We looked around and hiked up this little hill. It was quite the workout since we haven't used our legs in days. (Yes, we skipped leg day.) There was a little trail up there with some freshly broken limbs around. We thought for sure there would be treasure. There wasn't, so I took this photo of Sparky. 

We waited out the wind for what seemed like forever. A guy gave us a bunch of snacks the other day, so we ate all those. Then we did what all boys do when their bored in the woods, we sharpened some sticks. 

We stuck them in the ground and found dead things to put on them. It was some Lord of the Flies shit out there. 

We also smashed stuff on the train tracks. Basically lost all our change to the railroad...

It started to calm down on the water around dusk, so we figured we'd make a break for it. It was a little breezy at first, but still felt pretty chill. About an hour in Sparky turns to me and says, "Hey Mad Dog, do these waves feel a little bigger to you?" They were long, so it just felt like the boat was rising and falling, but they were pretty big. 

Before we knew it the wind had picked up too. It was a moonless night so visibility was ridiculously nonexistent. You couldn't tell how big the waves were, but some of them were pushing 4-5 feet. Undoubtedly the largest waves we've seen yet, and we couldn't even see them. We buried the bow once or twice, and a barge wake came over the side and got my jeans all wet. Needless to say, it was a terrible idea going out in that stuff. 

We both wanted out pretty bad, so we made for shore. What looked like shear cliffs to me, turned out to be a little rocky beach with a big pine forest on it. Sparky noticed something in the bushes and went to check it out. 

He found a little cashe. On top was written,

"Free to the finder. Praise God."

Inside was a can of red spray paint, a travel mug, a jar of matches, a couple of mesh/net things, and about 15 pounds of catalogs from the summer of '99. 

It wasn't what we were expecting (alcohol), but it was still nice to find. We actually found some treasure on our trip. Might even have been the only people to find it since someone stashed it here 15 years ago.