Kayaking in SEA CAVES on the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore in Wisconsin!

Hello from Wisconsin! After road tripping the north shore of Minnesota we have headed 86 miles east to explore the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. The Apostle Islands National Lakeshore is managed by the National Park Service and is located on the Bayfield Peninsula in northern Wisconsin on Lake Superior. The National Lakeshore includes 21 of the 22 Apostle Islands as well as mainland sea caves which you can explore by kayak boat and camping. We just dropped off Kona for the day and today we're going on a half-day kayaking tour to see some of the mainland sea caves up close but first we're here in the town of Bayfield for a quick pre-kayak caffeine boost. We just got two delicious lattes from a great place in town called Wonder State Coffee. We're just walking by the water here and enjoying the charming town of Bayfield. It is so cute here and if you want to explore the Apostle Islands by boat they have a few cruises that leave out of here but we're actually going to head across the Bayfield Peninsula to the town of Cornucopia for our kayaking tour. Today we're doing a half-day kayaking tour with Lost Creek Adventures. It's going to be about a four mile paddle and three and a half hours. It costs about $70 per person not including the tip and we're not going to be kayaking out to the actual Apostle Islands but to the mainland sea caves which are part of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. They said the water is 50 degrees so they're giving us wetsuits to put on. Let's squeeze into this thing. We're in the water. This is awesome. This is our first time ever in a sea kayak. It's pretty intense. So we're going to actually follow the coastline up, stop right before the caves, do a quick geology talk, and then we'll start heading in the caves. So does everyone know what type of rock this is behind me? Sandstone. Exactly. So it's actually more specifically Devil's Island sandstone which is one of three different sandstones in the area. There's the Orienta, the Schwamigan, and the Devil's Island. The Devil's Island sandstone stretches along the shoreline here, hits the east side of Sand Island, and goes all the way out to Devil's Island. So the Devil's Island sandstone is very significant because it is actually the most brittle, the most coarse out of the three types of sandstone. So it creates these massive and magnificent caves and it erodes so easily through wave and ice damage. It used to be the lake floor and then with the glaciers it compressed it and that's what created those sediment layers. So there are different layers of sediment. As we go along there's spots where there's fossilized lake floor. So if you look up you'll see like what you would see on the bottom of the lake 20-30 feet up above you. So take a look as you're going through for that. So we just paused in this cove back here and they kind of gave us a little bit of a geology talk. But just the layers of these rock faces and all the little holes in there. The trees just hanging on to the cliff face there. It's really interesting cool to see. The rocks just have this gorgeous orange-red color and the water is so blue. The contrast between the two is just gorgeous. What? We're about to go through our first cave and it's a teeny tiny one. And there's another one. This is so amazing. That is awesome. That was pretty cool. I didn't think we'd fit through it. Oh my gosh. I didn't realize we'd be going through such small caves. If you're claustrophobic you may hate this but we are loving it. Oh my gosh. I was not expecting this. All right we are headed back now but we're going to hopefully stop at a crevasse that we had to skip on the way out on our way back. We allow one loop and then you actually have to back on the cave because you can't turn the tandem around once you're back there. It would just be too tight. You're going to get stuck. If you look in the very far back of the crevasse you can see it actually gets so narrow that it's only a boat width apart and you can actually go down there for quite a bit. Once you get there it's definitely making sure you turn your paddles inside. We are going in the crevasse. This reminds us of the narrows at Zion. Wow. Holy crap. This is nuts. So to get out of here we have to back up the whole way which may be kind of hard. Look up above. All right I think that's about as far as we can go. Beep. Beep. Backing up. Let's get out of here. Can't see where I'm going. That was so cool to go in that little channel there. It is so tight. It's just about as wide as the canoe like an inch on either side. It was a lot of fun. Goodbye cute skirt. We just got done with our kayaking tour and the tour was so amazing and so much fun. As you can see the sun has come out and the weather is perfect. Our guides were great and the whole experience was just really calm and relaxing and it was really cool and neat to see the different the cliff faces with the trees hanging over and then we got to go through some of the tunnels and like duck under them. It was just a really fun experience. We hope we did it somewhat justice with our filming. It's really hard to tell with the GoPro and it was hard to like kayak, film, get photos and then not get left behind. Just try to stay with the group. So hopefully it turned out okay and if not just come see it for yourself because it is spectacular out here. But that is the end of today's adventure. We had to go book it to pick up Kona and then we have about a four and a half five hour drive inland. We're mostly staying along the lake while we're here in the Great Lakes but we had a pretty cool opportunity for very early tomorrow morning that's taking us much more inland for a little bit. Hint, it's something Wisconsin is very well known for. As well as mainland sea caves which you can explore by kayak, boat and camping. What are you doing? I could tell I was trying not to look for a quick pre-kayak caffeine boost. Dang I said it. Quick pre-kayak caffeine boost is I can't do it. The pre gets me. If you take out pre, quick kayak. I can do that. Quick pre-kayak.