Our Maiden Voyage

How much fun is it to introduce people to something you love? Today was tons of fun (minus the crying).

I loaded up our new canoe, with some help from Luis, and packed everything up for our first trip out together. Aidan's never been on the water before, Luis has never been with us, and Captain D (the big brother) has never been in a boat before.

We had a great time! We saw at least two blue herons, possibly three but they were flying around a bit so we couldn't keep track. Several fish were jumping and lots of fisherman both boating and shore fishing were out this evening.

Aidan got a little cranky (he'd already had a long day) and was squirming around a bit too much for Luis' liking so he opted to take Aidan back on land and let Captain D and I explore a little more. This is a shot of them from the boat. There was also a group of cyclists tearing down the road behind them, that was exciting to see, but not uncommon for this put-in.

I have to say, for my first time piloting a canoe, let alone taking one out without my dad's help, I did pretty well. It was my first time IN this canoe at all, so that didn't help with Luis' concerns about the stability--I wasn't 100% aware of it's maneuvering myself.

It's a pretty fun boat though, and it's stable...for a canoe with four people in it, one of them less than a year old. I managed to paddle the four of us around solo for a while, then I let Captain D have at it with the bow. He did pretty well for a 9 year old who's new at it. He asked a lot of questions.

"How do you turn?"

"How are you getting us to go straight?"

"Why do you have the yellow paddle?"

But I hope he doesn't outgrow this inquisitive nature, he'll learn a lot this way.


I'm really hoping to have more trips like this soon, and to get us all out camping together, but that presents challenges of it's own. I'm already making plans for summer vacation...

And perhaps dad will be getting a new waterproof camera for father's day. He forgot to tell me this one can't keep a charge in either battery, so we didn't get as many photos as I would have liked, but I feared the worst for our ability to stay dry and didn't want to risk my camera.