dean rambling…
06.24.2008
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Archive for the 'june' Category
audio posts – shearwater to prince rupert
Published 4 Jul 2008 audio , inside passage , july , june 1 Comment
6/30 campania island
6/30, day 48, 0 mi, 608 mi total
with sunshine comes strong northwesterly winds in these parts, so we spent the day hanging out at the beach.
we thought campania island would be about as remote as we would get on this trip, but the beach has been the busiest we’ve found yet. this morning after breakfast a man who lives on another island and does whale research stopped by with his dog to stretch their legs and chatted. then a sailboat anchored just offshore and a couple people rowed over to poke around. we went out for a little paddle up the inlet here and ran into a couple from port townsend doing a little exploring in kayaks from their boat. the husband had kayaked from wa to ak a few years ago and had lots of good stories and bits of advice. when we got back for lunch, the same guide from a local lodge who we met here yesterday was back with more guests for the afternoon… all sorts of company. crazy.
unfortunately we’ve also had lots of company from the insect world here. yesterday i thought the sand flies were moderately annoying – they don’t buzz, they don’t inflict pain, they’re just there. but then i woke up and discovered the burning itching welts the size of a quarter all over my ankles and forearms and remembered the horror of new zealand sandflies. apparently they’re related. grr…
sidenote: the lodge guide solved the mystery of the week – apparently the things i described a few days ago surround the eggs of moon snails. which i would have never figured out, but makes sense since we’ve been seeing lots of big moon snail shells on the beaches.
6/29 fog lifting off campania island and mt pender
6/29, day 47, 17 mi, 608 mi total
after a whole week’s absence, the sun is back. the whole sky is blue, all of our gear is dried to a strange crispiness… i even got a stream bath. and it didn’t rain today.
there are two main routes we had to choose between to get from shearwater to prince rupert. the classic is the “inside passage” but we chose the “outside passage” because several people mentioned campania island as the highlight of their trip. and this morning we crossed camaano sound to campania. when we first arrived, the fog was sitting along the shore so thick we could barely see 100 feet but it burned off and we were treated to some spectacular views of the aquamarine water set off by the white rocks and the green trees and the bare mountainsides above. we’re camped on a big white sand beach surrounded by some of the most stunning scenery we’ve seen on this trip.
i’ve been begging for sunshine a lot recently, but i didn’t expect to be sitting in the sand in the blazing hot sun searching in vain for a bit of shade. at least not so abruptly.
6/28 rocks in the fog
6/28, day 46, 30 mi, 591 mi total
woke up to the same soundtrack we fell asleep to… raindrops on the tent fly. it finally let up late morning after roughly 65 hours of continuous rain. the clouds were still thick and low all day, though, never lifting more than a couple hundred feet off the water.
which made for some interesting encounters with the sea planes flying by sight along the channel… they were buzzing back and forth for a couple hours, presumably shuttling guests to the resorts in the area. by the last few runs they were clearly messing with us, flying about 50 feet up (dean says more like 20-30) and swerving right over us. i got a couple crazy pictures.
paddling through the thick fog early this morning, we couldn’t help but be reminded of day one of this trip when we paddled out of port townsend in a similar fog. it was a good reminder of just how much things have changed in the last six weeks. conditions that seemed daunting a few weeks ago are routine now. we’re so much stronger – 30 miles was a full day today but it felt good. after we set up camp i went exploring around the island instead of collapsing onto my bed. my feet are baby soft after weeks of being soggy and unused, but my hands have all sorts of new calluses. and probably most amazingly, i have actually developed some muscle tone in my shoulders and back where i thought i’d never see anything but skin over bone. who’da thunk it.
6/27, day 45, 0 mi, 561 mi total
it’s been raining nonstop for the last 2 days and it’s been 5 days since we last saw the sun. i knew this was part of the deal when i planned a trip along the northern coast but… well, it doesn’t change reality. camping out in the rain isn’t so fun. it wears on you. everything we own is somewhere on the spectrum from clammy damp to utterly soaked. luckily most of it nearer the damp end but that doesn’t help the fact that everything is also somewhere between wet dog and sour dishrag, and there’s no good place between them.
the wind has been blowing like crazy since yesterday so there was no chance of us paddling today. you’d think all this wind could blow the rainclouds past us but they seem a pretty permanent fixture… luckily we’re hunkered down in a good protected spot and even have company as matt and stacy weren’t braving the elements today either.
so, another day for my muscles to grow stronger.
6/26, day 44, 15 mi, 561 mi total
generally uneventful day… just another bit of summer on the northern coast. which is to say, it was cool and rainy and windy. we haven’t had a chance to dry things out since we left shearwater so the dampness is pretty pervasive at this point. we paddled all morning and mostly hid out in the tent this afternoon. read the relevant pages in the guidebook for the umpteenth time, played some cribbage, lazed, generally passed a rainy day…
i’ve been singing “oh lawd won’t you buy me a mercedes benz…” for days now. days. on the day we moved out of our cabin in may, dean frantically collected song lyrics online and printed them. so now in every resupply box, he gets a few. which then go in his mapcase so he can sing while we paddle. i’ve learned a few, but mostly i get random lines stuck in my head until they drive me mad. other songs he’s lodged in my brain: only the good die young and you may be right (billy joel), the gambler (kenny rogers), tangled up in blue (bob dylan), a boy named sue and cocaine blues (johnny cash)…
most exciting event of the day: two other kayakers pulled up to our campsite this afternoon! a couple who is 5 days into a monthlong trip is also spending the night here. people to talk with! very exciting.
6/25 lunchtime self portrait
6/25, day 43, 27 mi, 546 mi total
paddled away from camp this morning and right into the swells… probably only about five feet high amd not steep at all like what we ran into south of cape caution. but there’s just something about seeing such massive movement in the water. you ride up one for a couple seconds then down for a couple seconds while you watch the next one approach. up and down. seeing them explode as they crash into the rocks doesn’t hurt the intimidation factor either. without the wind to confuse things it was actually pretty mellow and as we headed north, the neighboring island offered more and more protection and things gradually flattened out.
after a lunch break we headed into higgins passage, about as sharp a contrast as you could find from the open sea of the morning. narrow and winding, unimportant enough that several of the little side inlets were uncharted. midway through, lohbrunner island nearly blocks it completely. with flat water and narrow confines we were only a few feet from shore; such a different perspective from this morning when we were a mile off, navigating by landmarks like islands and channels. it’s something i wish we’d find more often out here – waterways that feel like they’re scaled just for a kayak. like you just belong.
mystery of the day: we took our morning break at this great little beach where i found something i’ve never seen before. of course i didn’t think to take a picture, but i’ll do my best to describe… it was shaped like the top couple inches of a vase, a lipped circle that then broadened to the shoulders of the vase and was cut off. it felt like plastic or rubber – smooth, flexible, not slimy or anything. and it looked like sand. i found one near the water line and then as we paddled away we saw heaps more in the shallows. i’m stumped.
6/24 rounding dryad point
6/24, day 42, 18 mi, 519 mi total
we were only off for 3 days but it felt like longer… as we glided out of the marina this morning, the cadence wasn’t quite automatic but muscle memory took over soon enough. it felt good to be back in the boat, good to feel the pull on the paddle.
it didn’t hurt that i had one of the best nights of sleep i’ve had in a few weeks. i splurged and bought an actual inflatable sleeping pad for this trip instead of the trusty ol’ z-rest i’ve used for hiking the past several years. it was great for the first 3 weeks or so but then it developed an auto-deflate feature. makes it easier to pack up come morning, but less conducive to restful sleep. i have no less than 6 patches on it, all of them reinforced at least 3 times. most recently in shearwater i used aquaseal and gorilla tape. it still didn’t hold air. so… we met 4 kayakers from olympia, wa yesterday afternoon who were wrapping up their 10-day long trip and catching the ferry home. they were friendly and gave us a couple books; we passed on the partial bottle of gin we wouldn’t be packing out. and i bought a thermarest off of one of them. a full length prolite 4-season (read: fatty) that doesn’t leak. it’s bliss. dean’s so jealous.
it’s another cool gray rainy day on the coast, this one with some wind. one of those marginal kind of days where it wasn’t too bad to be out there but you didn’t want to be out there all day. so we paddled as far as we could before it got too exposed and called it a day.
we’re camped just across the way from ivory island tonight, home to one of the few remaining manned lighthouses along the coast. it’s really tempting to call in, but then i’m not sure what you say… “hello. your job sounds fascinating. care to show us around?”
6/23, day 41, 0 mi, 501 mi total
it’s monday. mail arrived around 1p. still no resupply box. i nearly had a meltdown. called the post office in the nearest town to check if they had seen it, and the lady described a large package that was fast falling apart. she couldn’t confirm the name on it, though, because she had just put it on the ferry. by 3p the ferry pulled up here and we saw the smiley face stickers and knew it was our box. saved! so we got everything sorted and packed and we’ll be off first thing in the morning. 18 days of food packed into the kayak… it’s crazy.
the bad news… we finally have digital pictures to share but the only public computer here is too old to allow us to upload photos or dean’s audio files. so all of that will have to wait until prince rupert. by then we should have a load of them.
audio posts – alert bay to shearwater
Published 20 Jun 2008 audio , inside passage , june Leave a Commentthe next set of audio diaries…
06.13.2008
06.14.2008
06.15.2008
06.16.2008
06.17.2008
06.18.2008
06.19.2008
06.20.2008
