Chain O'Lakes - Indiana July 2021

Having booked our visit to Chain O'Lakes early in the year, so early we still had snow, right? As the time grew closer, it appeared mother nature was once again throwing a possible rain out on us, again. This would be our 4th trip of the season and have been all but rained out the prior 3. Sure enough, it rained. It rained for the first 4 days of our scheduled 7 days. With that said, we did get the last 3 with some beautiful 70 degree, sunny, blue bird sky days !! We also met 4 of the nicest people just two campsites over from us. Gary & Sherry and their friends Tim & Marlene. All from Holland, MI who took a shot at coming down to Indiana's version of the Chain O'Lakes. Ginger and I had already started the Chain O'Lakes Challenge, that is paddling all 9 inter-connected lakes. Capturing photos of mile markers, Selfies, and the POI's (points of interest) as defined as part of the challenge. We had completed half of the challenge on Thursday. Since the park didn't have a shuttle service, we actually did the first half twice. Once there and then back again, in order to be able to take out since we only had one vehicle. After meeting Gary, he said he could give me a ride back to Sand Lake the next day as their crew were going to run the whole 9 that day. What a life saver that was for Ginger and I. However, mother nature just had to get in a last dig. Starting off, my lovely one forgot to unload the paddles from the truck as we dropped everything off at Sand Lake and I ran the truck up to Miller Lake to drop it off and to catch up with Gary for the ride back. Once back, I realize we had no paddles. Luckily the park rents kayaks, boats and the like and I was able to secure a couple of kayak paddles. Whew, crisis averted... Now the rest of the story, once we launched it became immediately apparent the head wind in play was going to be an issue, and it was. The whole trip... Well, unless we ran the shoreline or during the little channels connecting the lakes. Then and only then did we catch a break. Nonetheless, we had a great trip and completed 'The Challenge'. Yay Team !!