Platt River Float

Thursday's forecast was for warm and sunny, so our plan was to meet up with Liz, Kevin and the kids again and take the crew on a float down the Platt River.  After hunting up tubes for everybody, we met up at the Platte River Picnic Area parking lot and got busy blowing up all the tubes.

With that not-so-little job done, we were loaded up and ready to go!

The women, children and tubes were dropped off at the put-in point while Tom, Todd, and Kevin shuffled vehicles.  Once they arrived at the fishing wier, we launched everybody into the river.  For a Thursday, it was pretty busy, and we had plenty of company on the water.

The Platte River is a shallow, fairly slow-moving river, which makes for a nice, leisurely 1-1/2 - 2 hour float.  The kids quickly got up ahead of us, and were having a blast splashing and tipping each other.  The adults followed behind, keeping a close eye on everyone to make sure nobody got separated from the crowd.

It was a beautiful day for a float, with not a cloud in the sky!  We saw a deer at the water's edge at one point, and a heron in the water at another spot.  We all enjoyed the trip, and were just starting to get a little restless when beach came into view.  The Platte River flows into Lake Michigan, and there is a really nice public beach where the two come together. 

We deflated all the tubes, and gathered all of our towels and lunches and headed down to the beach for the rest of the afternoon.

The water here is so clean, and you can go out a mile before it gets really deep!

See how far out the kids are -- and it's barely chest-deep on Bryce!

Of course, no day at the beach is complete until somebody gets buried in the sand!

Around 7pm, we finally packed it all up and called it a day -- everybody was tired after our long day on the water and at the beach.  Back at the campground, we had a quick dinner, and the kids watched a movie.  It was an early night for all of us!