So remember when I mentioned that Anya and I recently bought kayaks.

This past Friday, Anya and I took a half day from work, and headed up to Moraine State Park and spent about four and a half hours on the water just cruising around, bird watching, and getting some exercise.

Eventually, while exploring one of the many fingers along the perimeter of the lake, we found this very interesting area. The entrance to it was a ravine walled on either side by sheer rock cliffs about twenty feet high. There were dead trees strewn about, and almost had an eerie feeling to it. Even the air was cooler - probably a good ten degrees cooler than out on the main part of the lake. After a bit, it came to a wooden bridge that allowed a walking trail above to cross the water - Anya and I decided to push on and glided under the bridge.

On the other side, the scenery changed again, this time to a meandering wetland that snaked along. I honestly felt like we were transported back in time. The banks were over-grown with large ferns, and I seriously expected to come around a bend in the stream to find a dinosaur munching on some of the tall grasses.

Well, something I haven't mentioned yet is that we also bought an underwater camera (I'll get more into details at a later date). So with that safely encased in its diving enclosure, and mounted to the front of my kayak using my Joby Gorillapod, I decided that it might be fun to take some videos on our way back out. So enough blabbering... enjoy. Oh - don't worry about audio, It isn't all that useful but I couldn't figure out how to mute it.

This is basically my first attempt at taking videos (and with uploading to YouTube), so there's obviously stuff to learn there, but for a first try, I think these came out pretty well.

What do you think? Tune in tomorrow when I'll be sharing the second video (which is the first section as we headed in from the main section of the lake).

- Bill