At the very end of Memorial Day, the Rolfs came into posession of a Kayak. Sure, it is a beginner's kayak and probably not actually, officially a kayak in the eye of those more experienced and wiser, but it's a boat, it floats, it holds one person who sits in an oval shaped space. Sounds like a kayak to me.
Here are a couple pics from the depths of the garage... before I cleaned it up a little.
Alexia popped into the picture - she was almost as excited as I was.
The boat is pretty short (as far as kayak's go)... probably about 9 feet long. It's also really wide... probably about as wide as a canoe.
Due to the lateness of the day, this vessels first 'Big Rock Excursion' trip wouldn't be until the following Saturday.
While everyone else was at the gym, Clear Lake beckoned me to visit.
Despite the unpredictable weather, for 60 minutes I paddled around half of Clear Lake. It was cloudy for 15 minutes, rained for 15 minutes, was partly sunny for 15 minutes and then partly windy for 15 minutes.
My phone managed to take three pictures... but they were all on 'macro' mode which only focuses on items that are about three inches away - or closer. Technically, the pics are awful, but they'll always have deep memories for me.
If nothing else, they may also be useful for demonstrating the 'best case scenario' of what I would actually see if my contacts happened to fall out (which they didn't, I promise).
This vessel was much more stable than I ever imagined a kayak would be. As a former rower on the WWU Crew team, I have plenty of hours of experience rowing in crew skulls. My concern with kayaking would be that it might tip over so easily - and probably real kayaks do - but this one is as safe as ever. Stable enough that I can't wait to get the kids out in the lake with it. Hopefully they'll love it too. It's unlikely you'll ever find our family of four boating around in kayaks all at once, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if we haul this thing around to a few lakes here and there on family outings.
Anyway, enough rambling. I'm looking forward to getting some float time in this thing in the near future... lakes haven't been too interesting for my hiking adventures, but now I'm excited to go visit some of those local waterways with this new perspective. Lake Samish, Baker Lake, Diablo Lake (oh yeah!), Clayton Beach, Bowman's Bay, anyone up for a short shuttle trip along the Skagit River?
Stay tuned for more...
Still owe this site three trip reports. Already used my video upload quota for this week on gymnastics videos... maybe next week will be catch-up week.
June 9th was the original scheduled hike date for June, but it was bumped for family events and has yet to be rescheduled. Check back later....
Happy Hiking (and/or boating)!
~E
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