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Update: I'm about halfway through this book and I have to say, I am impressed. Perhaps it is just me and my particular taste, but I would rank this up there with John Green's Apes Among Us for hitting all the marks between scientific and anecdotal to engaging without insulting your intelligence by being the typical "rehashed stories". It's quite refreshing.

Todd Neiss has confirmed that Peter Byrne has passed away. the last of the 4 horsemen has left the field. I wish I had had the chance to have met him, I know there's a lot of mixed feelings about some of the 4 horsemen but they were pioneers and directly or indirectly responsible for what everyone is doing in the field today.

I wanted to update about my trip. I went to the State Park, and kayaked probably a mile or a little more. The creek was rather full of fallen trees and limbs. I went on Thursday September 15th. I was using an inflatable kayak. I have to say, I am extremely impressed with it. I kept hearing branches and rocks scraping from underneath that I could not see in the murky water. After the trip I closely examined the bottom and I could not find any rough spots. For $100, I think I already have gotten my money value from it. On Thursday, after a little over a mile, I had to turn around because there was a huge tree all the way across the creek, and even though I could have scaled the tree trunk and re-embarked the kayak on the other side during the day time, I knew there was no safe way to do that at night. I set out apples during the day, and scoped out a place to come back at night. I identified a stretch of creek that was about 2 football fields long, that had deeper water, fewer trees and limbs, and I felt that it was clean enough to navigate in an inflatable kayak in the dark. So that night I returned. I had to park and then walk down about a half mile service road to get to the spot on the creek to where I would have a clear 200 yards to drift in and listen. I heard nothing unusual while traveling on foot on the service road. I got in the creek with my inflatable kayak, and got positioned with a "weed grabber" kayak anchor that clamps on to any weeds or tree limbs sticking out of the water. Then I would turn off my red headlamp and listen in the dark. After about 15 minutes I would turn on my headlamp, look around, then drift about 40 yards or so, find another "grabber anchor" point, and do it all over again. The creek was fairly low, and the biggest thing I noticed is that when I turned my red headlamp on, you could see thousands of sparkling spider eyes all over the banks. It literally looked like thousands of tiny reflecting diamonds. You would not believe how many wolf spiders are on the banks of a creek at night. I was on the water in the dark for about 2 hours. All I heard were acorns falling into the water. At one point, I heard a small branch cascading down through the tree limbs on its way to splashing in the water. The current story going around the state park is that Bigfoot throws rocks at you and you can hear them plop loudly in the creek. The loudest sound I heard was about 50 feet from me, when 2 large bass popped the water. I have heard that sound many times fishing. I have heard bass do that and I have even seen and heard large catfish come to the surface and do that. It sounded like large fist sized rocks ka-plunking into the water. It made me wonder, are people coming out here who have never heard a bass pop a frog or bug on the surface, and because Bigfoot is supposedly in the park, they automatically assume the noise is a bigfoot? The next day, my grown son came and we kayaked the creek again in the daylight, to check the piles of apples I had put out. Nothing had disturbed them. We also hiked for several miles, and did not see anything outside of normal. All in all, it was a super relaxing and fun trip, and time spent Friday with my grown son outdoors. As they way, a "bad day" bigfooting is a wonderful day in God's creation. I think I will turn my attention to the Uwharries. They are a little closer to me, and I have actually seen a print and heard a noise that I could not identify there. Thank you everyone for the input and advice you gave before my trip.