For Father's Day, as is the custom, Brett got to choose what he wanted to do all day. The first adventure on his list was
canoeing.
Canoeing as a family is something that he loves to do, the kids like to do, and I do. I'm not sure when I became so lame, but I'm
definitely not the adventurous-type that I used to be. I'm okay with that.
Aidan was in the front (all technical names will be omitted) paddling, and Brett was in the back. I was on the floor as a "duffer" making sure the youngest "duffer" didn't tip the canoe. Emma and Gigi were behind me in the other two "duffer" spots.
All was going smoothly until an angry otter popped his head out of the water. It was great seeing an otter in the wild, but the excitement soon wore off as I realized we were approaching the critter at a much faster rate than I was comfortable with. The bad part about being a "duffer" is that you are at the mercy of the two paddlers, and when one of them wants to get a closer look at the getting-angrier-by-the-moment otter, there is absolutely nothing to be done. I really thought that our new
acquaintance was going to jump into the canoe with us, but instead he stood as tall as he could and hissed at us. Apparently that didn't have the effect that he had hoped because he soon ducked back into the water and was not to be seen again. Of course, being the imaginative and somewhat irrational being that I am I just knew that, just like in any movie/book, the otter was planning on resurfacing just below the canoe so he could tip us over and swallow us into the dark depths of the ocean, er..bay. It would have made for an even greater story, but he allowed us to pass unharmed.
The next friend we came across was a little water snake. At this point the front paddler (who was not the one who wanted a closer look at the otter, in case you hadn't figured that out yet) had had enough wildlife viewings for the day. Knowing that we have zero poisonous snakes up here I thoroughly enjoyed watching the little fellow swim in front of the canoe.
Maybe five minutes had passed when I heard one of the duffers (who will remain unnamed to protect her integrity) announce, "Quiet! Stop paddling!!!! What is that sound?????!!!!!!" This may or may not have caused a general sense of panic in the "under 32" category. We did manage to keep the noise level low enough to hear a black bear run off into the woods. Now, it is true that we never actually had a visual confirmation of the man-eating creature, but we are fairly certain that it was indeed a bear. We've discussed other, less-exciting options and so far we can't come up with another animal that could have made such an elephant-like sound as it ran away from the floating, shrieking vessel that was approaching his favorite swimming hole.
The non-shrieking member of the canoe tried to convince us that we could catch a
glimpse of the fleeing bear if we continued down-stream a while longer. I was ever-so-grateful that the youngest duffer had decided she was through with
canoeing at that point (perhaps somewhat induced by the previous shrieking episode), so I somehow convinced our jungle-guide to turn us back around. I was grateful that I couldn't see behind us as we slowly made our way to safety,
uhm, I mean the shore because I just knew I would see the bear watching us, licking his chops, irritated that his hot summer day swim had been interrupted.
Yep! That's a wolf alright!
Okay, so we were on the other side of a glass wall. 
Pretty amazing animals!
We went to the International Wolf Center up in Ely, MN on Wednesday. We have plenty of wolves in the woods up here, but I would much rather seem them this way. 
