One Way Stream
Most of the day my father, brother, and I were busy doing home maintenance tasks that required more than one set of hands so by early evening I was more than ready to hit the lake in my kayak.
A couple of miles from my parent's house I found this stream. I tried calling Julie while I was there but to no avail. It was a windy day and by the time I had found this isolated bit of calm water I was quite willing to rest a bit.
But after a few minutes of looking around I decided to continue on into the narrow section of the stream to see how far up I could go before it got too shallow.
Normally in a kayak you don't need much water beneath you, but this kayak is built for someone 185 pounds of less---and I haven't seen that weight in a number of years. With my 215 pounds aboard, this kayak wallows like a sick hippo. I like the color though. Carolina blue, y'know?
Anyway, the kayak also has a rudder so that gives it even less draft. But I continued up the stream 'til I got to the point in the picture on the left. The current, while still mild, was enough that I couldn't put the paddle down for long to take a picture.
Since the stream was a lot narrower than the kayak, which is 12 feet long, I could only go straight forward or paddle backwards. And paddling backwards in a narrow stream with lots of underwater logs and rocks is... annoying. I was trying to put it off as long as possible. Though of course it would be necessary in the end. :-(
Isn't it pretty how the banks are deep with the hill in the background rising up steeply to the trees on the ridge. I wish the camera was able to keep the ideal light for all 3 areas but unfortunately if the stream was lit well then the hill was overexposed. As a result, the picture makes invisibly the lovely top of the ridge and all the green trees up top. You can only see the hill that was near to me.
This picture is only a few yards ahead of the last one but just that short distance made taking a clear picture difficult. Between the current and hitting the ground under the kayak my arms couldn't hold the camera still long enough to take a picture.
After taking a few blurry shots here I started the long and tedious task of backing out of the stream. It was a couple of hundred yards before it was wide enough to turn around. I felt like one of those big trucks. I couldn't see behind me so there were a lot of groundings involved before I got to deeper water. It'd have been a lot easier if I had a rudder I could raise from inside the boat. At one point I almost got out so I could lift the kayak over one big underwater rock but patience won out in the end.
A couple of miles from my parent's house I found this stream. I tried calling Julie while I was there but to no avail. It was a windy day and by the time I had found this isolated bit of calm water I was quite willing to rest a bit.But after a few minutes of looking around I decided to continue on into the narrow section of the stream to see how far up I could go before it got too shallow.
Normally in a kayak you don't need much water beneath you, but this kayak is built for someone 185 pounds of less---and I haven't seen that weight in a number of years. With my 215 pounds aboard, this kayak wallows like a sick hippo. I like the color though. Carolina blue, y'know?
Anyway, the kayak also has a rudder so that gives it even less draft. But I continued up the stream 'til I got to the point in the picture on the left. The current, while still mild, was enough that I couldn't put the paddle down for long to take a picture.Since the stream was a lot narrower than the kayak, which is 12 feet long, I could only go straight forward or paddle backwards. And paddling backwards in a narrow stream with lots of underwater logs and rocks is... annoying. I was trying to put it off as long as possible. Though of course it would be necessary in the end. :-(
Isn't it pretty how the banks are deep with the hill in the background rising up steeply to the trees on the ridge. I wish the camera was able to keep the ideal light for all 3 areas but unfortunately if the stream was lit well then the hill was overexposed. As a result, the picture makes invisibly the lovely top of the ridge and all the green trees up top. You can only see the hill that was near to me.
This picture is only a few yards ahead of the last one but just that short distance made taking a clear picture difficult. Between the current and hitting the ground under the kayak my arms couldn't hold the camera still long enough to take a picture.After taking a few blurry shots here I started the long and tedious task of backing out of the stream. It was a couple of hundred yards before it was wide enough to turn around. I felt like one of those big trucks. I couldn't see behind me so there were a lot of groundings involved before I got to deeper water. It'd have been a lot easier if I had a rudder I could raise from inside the boat. At one point I almost got out so I could lift the kayak over one big underwater rock but patience won out in the end.
Comments