Kayaking

This was a trip of first - Our first overnight kayaking trip with Sara, Our first time doing an overnight trip in the inflatable kayaks, first time doing a (minor) ocean passage crossing. Overall the trip was close to 12 miles - 5.5 each way but the current pushed us off course a bit. Lots of paddling - but totally worth it! I thought Sara’s video did a great job summing up this trip.

Larabee state park round two in the last couple of months - this time with a kayak. Derek came along as well - which was super fun for a change. In total, almost 7 miles of kayaking, playing on the beach, camping, movie watching, campfires, and games galore. Here we are all ready to go: And then the morning paddle - about 3 miles, but very choppy/rough seas. Made paddling any distance really hard… I didn’t get a picture, but we saw some seals from up close - which was super fun - but Sara didn’t seem super impressed. She was far more interested in the bubbles!

Our first Van trip as a family - and our first trip with a working battery… :) This was also our first trip with our new inflatable Kayak, which was super fun. Sara and I left early Saturday and got a campsite, bought some groceries, and went on a hike around the south side of deception pass. The hike had some amazing views and we were able to get some play time on the beach as well. Almost a 3 mile hike and Sara did about half of it on her own.

Back in 2016, we were invited up to a friend of a friend’s house on Lake Crescent. The house was technically inside the national park - one of those grandfathered in things before the Olympic National park included Crescent lake. 2016-08-07 We took the ferry over to Bainbridge island and the captain called out an unfortunate soul who grounded his sailboat on the wing point shoal. Id didn’t understand why or the implications of this at the time, but this is really bad - especially if he was going at speed. Hopefully he was going slow and didn’t damage his keel but either way he was going to be stuck there for the next at least 12 hours but probably 24. Bad day…

About a year after our san juan’s kayaking trip, Diane had this great idea of doing a sea kayaking trip in Alaska - in the Chugach mountains area. She did all the research and found us a guide group and we were on our way! We flew into Anchorage and then rented a car to drive to Whittier - which is the deep water port that services Anchorage and cuts through the small mountain range that separates Anchorage from Prince William Sound. The Whittier tunnel is 2.5 miles long (longest in North America), is one way, and can accommodate both cars/trucks as well as trains. It was apparently built during WW2 to provide Anchorage with access to a deep water port - as big ships were unable to enter the Anchorage port directly. To this day, cruise ships enter Whittier and passengers are bussed to Anchorage as they are unable to reach anchorage directly.