We finally have a canoe! I've wanted one for ages, and she has as well. It took us quite a while to decide what to get, and of course no small amount of time to save up for it, and even once we ordered it, it took a long time to actually get it into our hands, but now it's here and we're loving it. With all the other things we've got going on right now, we haven't had the time to take it out to any of the mountain lakes or coastal bays, but thanks to a fairly wet year, there is enough water in the river that we've still been able to get our feet wet (pun intended).

We've gone out twice to our local river and exceeded our expectations each time. The first time we put in just above one dam and paddled upstream and around an island for a round trip of ~2.25 miles, and the second time we put in at the same place but went further, up to the next dam, for a round trip of ~3.4 miles. Using GPS and monitoring our speed while drifiting, it seems that the river has just about a 2 mph current. It's a workout going against it, but a nice free ride coming back. We sure are looking forward to having the time to venture farther.


Me resting in the stern, about a mile upstream from where we started. We're at the foot of a small island, with two narrow channels to either side. The current picks up around the island, and there's less room to manuever, so we wanted to rest and then hit it hard.


This is about where we turned back, obviously there's no way we could paddle over the dam, and though we could have portaged around it, we figured we'd save that stretch for another day.

MV