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Best Vacation Ever!
Eric Griffin - greenpig51@hotmail.com
Dateline 09/28/98
I recently went on a camping trip with my family. Big deal, right? Well, it was for me! We drove about 2 hours away from home to go to the Adirondack Mountians, in my homestate, New York. We stayed at a lake called Harris Lake. It is a fairly large lake well known for largemouth. But what it is best know is for its Northern Pike population, the 1992 champion pike lake.
When we first got there, I decided to go fishing for a little while. It hadn't even been 5 whole minutes since we got there, and already I had a strike. And it was a big one, on my ultra-lite tackle! I called to my dad, who was looking at the campsite. I yelled "Dad, I got one!"
My ultra-lite rod was bending almost in half. I don't think my dad believed me, he thought I had a snag! But I pulled the fish out of the water, and it was a nice sized largemouth bass. He hit a perch colored Rapala Original Floater, and was 15 inches long. It was a nice fish for my 4 pound test. After my mom snapped a picture, I put the fish back into the water. I watched him swim off. Unfortunatly, that was only only big fish. Over the next 4 days, I caught a 7 incher off a rented canoe, and a 1.5 inch largemouth from shore!
We went on a canoe ride on the 3rd night, and it was a site! This campgound is just some sites cut out of the woods around the lake. No condo camping! All nature. On this boat ride, me and my dad paddled, and my mom and sister rode along. Since we were in so much nature, and not a single bit of it touched my human, we saw a great many surprises. The first was a HUGE great blue herron, the first I had ever seen.
The second was a bit surprising itself, and this is how it happened. We were paddling along this little river, no bigger than most creeks, and we thought we saw something up ahead. It looked like a beaver, and when we got close enough we realized that it was. When we were about 30 feet away from him, he started to crossed back to the other side of the the river, and when we came close enough, he SMASHED his tail on the water and made a HUGE smacking sound.
We turned back downstream a little ways, and paddled up a little branch that flows into the river. About a few hundred yards upstream this way, ANOTHER beaver came out and crossed out in front of us! This one did the same thing, just not as loud. It was amazing.
This was the absolute BEST vacation that I've ever been on, and I would reccomend to anyone to got camping. By the way, this wilderness river that I was talking about was the Hudson. You would have to see it to believe it! You would never guess it, in a million years. Looks like perfect trout water, and it is. And that was my good vacation.
