a summer of paddling

Most people who do pretty cool things find themselves injured at some point in their lives. Brandon does a lot of cool things, he skis mountains, can fix anything with moving parts, and also he's a member of an exclusive club, Costco. In the typical fashion Brandon sprained his ankle doing super mundane- carrying a duffle bag while wearing flip flops. So since June, we've been spending time sitting, and also sitting and paddling. 

Our family has a whole battalion of small human powered watercrafts, we have everything except a canoe. So we decided to take up canoeing. We found the perfect canoe candidate to add to our fleet. The Montgomery Ward "Sea King". This elite model was first put into production in 1972, and our particular vintage specimen was last registered in the state of California in 1995. She weighs between 100-200 pounds, came full of wasp nests, and always tracks sightly left. Our family was ecstatic to see she still floated. 

Annabelle is happier than a hog in shit when she is canoeing and catching blue gills so we decided to go on a multi-day canoe camping trip down Diablo Lake into Ross Lake to catch trout, cannon ball off docks and explore a new area.

Our trip started out with gentle paddle down Diablo Lake canal then a 1.5 mile portage up and around the Ross Lake Dam into Ross Lake. You could pay the Ross Lake Resort to portage your boat and gear in exchange for money. Annabelle has been asking a lot about money lately, and we explained to her its a currency used when people exchange goods and services.  "Oh, like ice cream?" she asks. We determined how much ice cream was equivalent to doing our own portage, and began dragging all our gear down the road on foot. Here are some pictures of us voting with our dollar. 

Once on Ross Lake we had three super cool nights of camping and wilderness playing.  Annabelle learned a lot of valuable six year old kid skills. She learned how to catch trout by casting, how to use a hat to catch minnows and that you can float on your sleeping map. Most notably she  learned how to spell the word "butt."  

Brandon and I in turn learned some valuable 41 year old skills too. Brandon learned where to stand to avoid getting hit in the balls by a flying spinner being casted by a six year old.  I learned how bad you smell like a dead fish when your hat was used as a minnow net. None the less they say six years old is the range you start making core childhood memories so maybe some of these moments will stick. 

On our paddle back to the truck we stopped at the Resort to meet up with another family. After we left  the wind picked up, then picked up some more to the point Brandon and I were paddling into a sustained 20 mile -a-hour head wind. As the wind picked up even more, and we began to question if we made any forward progress, Annabelle dozed off into the first nap she's taken in nearly three years.  After 45 minutes of couples adversity training we were able to pull the boat up into a protected cove to get on shore and wait for sunset, which is when the wind often calms down. 

 We were both totally exhausted from paddling into the wind, but Annabelle woke up well rested "Daddyo! Do you want to go bush whacking or do you want to wrestle!?!" Daddyo laid in the hammock instead, and we waited out the wind, then just before sunset we shoved off to conquer the remaining 2 miles of our trip, back to the truck, then back home, into the shower, and into bed for roughly 12 hours.

 

It was a good adventure.