Thursday, August 31, 2023 Doin’ Some Canoein’

We’ve been out in the canoe a few times in the last month, finally exploring local lakes and rivers. Our first voyage was through shallow channels that in less droughty conditions would constitute a river. Our paddles frequently met with the sandy bottom. I saw some odd little logs that turned out to be a friendly group of disgusting carp. Each time we came around a bend, we startled some contingent of wildlife – deer, lots of egrets and herons, a few ducks and even an otter (which I never saw – I’m taking Kris’s word for it). Many, many times I wished I could have brought my big camera with the zoom lens along, but it’s too risky. We keep our phones in a waterproof bag so it’s not always easy to get photos at all. At one point, the river got so shallow that Kris had to get out and pull us along. Visions of “The African Queen” danced through my head, but I made sure the leeches from that scene weren’t dancing in there, too. Toward the end, I had to get out and help pull, which ruined my sense of being carried along like royalty.

Our second time out, we explored a lake instead. After going under a bridge, we came to a tree-covered island that turned out to be a roosting place for hundreds of large waterfowl. Very cool. We discovered that we could keep our cameras in sandwich bags and take photos right through the bag. Since our sandwich bags were green, this lent an interesting filmy look to the photos which I rather liked.

We were on the water by 8:00 this morning in the cool of the day, paddling in choppy water to start with and then making our way to the western side of the lake where we encountered millions of milfoil weeds and chased off a congregation of pelicans. We stuck close to the southern shore on the way back, a nice smooth ride with the sun rising higher and making us sweat a little. Our souls were fatter by the time we left our valiant little water steed and got back into the car.