Midnight Ninja Riders float Tahkenitch Creek

This weekend I embarked on a float trip through the oregon dune ecosystem south of Florence OR. My buddies Shima, Jared and I took off on a Friday afternoon with canoe and all of the necessary supplies for a float trip.
The plan:
Put in boat at Tahkenitch lake and paddle through the lake to Tahkenitch creeka and eventually make our way to the ocean.

What actually happened: We put at Tahkenitch boat ramp, while we were loading the canoe we realized just how full she was going to be, with backpacks, camping equipment, and beer. I was the last one to get in, in the middle of the canoe when I got in the boat was real tippy, tippy to the point where we nearly capsized before ever leaving the boat ramp, our stuff got wet as some water flooded into the boat, thoroughly scared and all of us asking ourselves what the hell we had just gotten ourselves into. We got out of the canoe and decided that two people should float and one follow along the bank until we got to the creek. That would have worked if we could get to the creek, but after paddling to where the entrance should have been we saw that there was a dam. We had to reevaluate the plan we paddled back to the car, took a look at the guidebook realized that the dam was right there on the map and that we needed to drive a half mile back to another parking area where we could get access to the creek below the dam. We loaded the canoe back on the car drove down to the other parking area and made the portage to the creek.

This time we were able to successfully manage three people in the canoe without tipping. It was dark though and there was definately tree obstacles, all i can say is that maglites are awesome and are alot brighter than a head lamp. We made it throgh the twists and turns of the river and we would occasionally hear the roar of the ocean as we cut stealthily through the water. We became the Midnight Ninja Riders, cutting through water without making a noise. We found a spot camp along the river and to our surprise there was a fair amount of dry wood and soon we had a campfire to stare at until the wee hours of the night.

Second day: it had rained all night but had stopped when we woke up, we took the canoe further down the stream, got out hiked to the ocean, like always the beach was windy really windy, we took back to the protection of the dunes and paddled further down the creek until we spotted a sand glacier in the distance. We took off through the brushband which is a nearly impenetrable fortress of brush, trees, swamps, and spiky bushes and finally got onto the eerie sand dunes. All of the sudden the landscape is rolling hills of giant sandunes and we spotted the sand glacier that we had wanted to climb. We made it to the top and had an incredible view of the ocean the surrounding bluffs and the gigantic dunes. The day was ended by paddling back upstream to camp, to stare at the fire once again

Third day: Packed up camp and paddled back upstream the Midnight Ninja Riders had completed their mission and we hastily made our way back to Eugene, where the weather was incredibly warm and it felt as if it was the first day of summer.