As usual, it has been a long time since my last post on here. Our summer wasn't quite as slow as I had anticipated, and BAM..now we are back into season mode! Yippeeee :)
A few weeks back I had the chance to guide my first trip. It wasn't planned like this. We had planned all along for Dallas to head out on this trip with a 'guy' from Norway that wanted to do a lot of paddling. It was a last minute booking and they were traveling solo so it all came together pretty quickly. The reservation forms were returned to us a couple days before the trip. After looking over them closer, we discovered that
Almut from Norway that wanted to go paddling for a week on a trip with just Dallas was not a
guy afterall, but a
gal.
For many, many reasons, we could not run the trip with just Dallas and Almut out there, so I was up to lead the trip, you know being female and all :)
The paddling was amazing!
Our route had us launching at Odie Creek and paddling out the mangroves over to the Brigantines. Camped our first night on Brigantine Cay. Then the next day we paddled over to Normans Pond Cay (seen above and below here). It was crazy how much some of the islands and beaches had been 'redesigned' by Hurricane Sandy. AND we were having extreme high tides during that time, so I was awake on and off throughout the nights making sure high tide didn't reach us in our tents :)
Luckily it never did, and we never had to do any late night rearranging.
The great thing about camping is that you go to bed nice and early most nights because you're pooped from kayaking and being in the sun all day, so waking up with the sun is so easy and always starts the day off on the right note.
Our next spot was up at Lignumvitae Cay (pictured above and below). I never thought camping on the casuarina pine needles would be such a nice change of pace. It helped keep your feet from tracking all the extra sand into the tent, so that was very nice. These are little tips I don't without being out on the trips :)
We decided to stay for two nights at Lignumvitae Cay so we could do some day paddling around the area a bit further north and then return to camp since we would be heading back down south the next day. There is an old historic home on an island nearby. Everyone calls it the German Castle. It is an old rundown house, but it still has so much character. I hope to find photos of it someday online of what it looked like in it's Glory Days.
The story goes that a Nazi-Sympathizer owned the island and house and built this place as a 'station' for the German U-boats during the World Wars. He began dredging out the channel between the two islands and stopped. I'm not 100% sure on the facts behind this, but regardless, it is an amazing home and location.
Some of the doors, cabinets and furniture were still in there and in place. Just makes you wonder, who sat there, what letters did they write, where were they from? Made this DIY-wannabe and enthusiast dream of renovating this amazing structure and turning it into something incredible again. Anyone want to finance that for me?? :)
We got to snorkel for a few minutes after our hike to the castle this day, and it was so nice to be in the water. We didn't do a lot of snorkeling on this trip because she was more interested in the paddles and seeing things from above the water (and shark zone in her mind). My camera wasn't working in the water case on this trip, so I didn't get any 'wet' shots this trip. I did get to dive down and touch a stingray though..always exciting!
We headed up to this cave (above) on Rudder Cut Cay. We sat in our kayaks and ate lunch inside here this day. It was actually very pleasant sitting in there eating lunch.
On our paddle back to camp, we decided to head back down our route on the ocean side of the islands. This doesn't happen often because the 'ocean' is usually too rough to paddle in safely. We had a really calm day and seemed to have the perfect opportunity, so we took it! It definitely felt odd being on the 'other' side of the island :) But it was fun! We paddled over some amazing little coral heads along the way, and as usual, I was fascinated by how much you can see while cruising along in the kayak. The photo above doesn't even do it justice. There were all kinds of fish below us.
Above are my little trinkets the boys sent out with me on the trip (we do this on all our trips--they choose a toy for us to take with us to 'remember' them--like we'd forget or something) :) Emit chose the ball and Joss chose the cool jet for me to take along. I had a few sweet conversations with my fellas and they seemed to be having a blast with Daddy-O. I think they missed me though, because even the other day (a couple weeks later) Joss told me, "mom, you know when you go out on a trip in the kayak like daddy? I really miss you then." Makes me feel good that they 1) miss me and 2) can have a great week with their daddy. He really is pretty awesome :)
This was our long stretch of the trip returning from Lignumvitae down to one of the lower cays to set camp for our final night. We stopped for a little break at Neighbor Cay, shown above. It was clearly sunny and bright here. As we left here, about 5 minutes later, the sky got dark and the rain came upon us. We paddled through a challenging little stretch of water and finally made it back over to Normans Pond Cay as the rain was leaving. It took us a long time to cross and there isn't anywhere to get out and stretch or hold your position along the way. The wind was coming right on us, so we didn't want to stop paddling for long when we did because we would lose all the ground we had gained the 5-10 minutes prior.
We went back to Normans Pond so we could paddle into the salt pond here that is only accessible at high tide. We had missed the tide the first night we were there. This was my first time in the pond and it was very surprising to me. It was a lot bigger and prettier than I thought it was going to be.
As you can see above, the clouds got dark again, but the next thing we know we're sitting ducks in the pond with a lightning storm right over head. It turned from a nice casual paddle in the trickling rain to total chaos in a matter of seconds. Her kayak flipped twice, trapped me in mine and had me wedged into some mangroves in the current pouring into the pond that we were trying to get out of so we could get to the beach and get into our lightning ready positions....the drama went on for a long time. If you really want to know details, you'll just have to call me or email me for that because I can't even begin to type it all. SOOO--note to self and fellow paddlers... always be prepared for the situation to turn on you in an instant! We finally made it out of the pond and decided to set up camp on Normans again since we weren't going to get to the next site I had planned before sunset.
Our final night was pretty miserable. After the storm blew through, the wind completely dropped off and the bugs came out in full force. We both just grabbed our dinner and jumped into our tents away from the pests. At least I had a nice view of the sun setting and the water though :) In spite of these pesky bugs that we have no control over, there is still tranquility in our surroundings. God is Good Like That!
Our final paddle day was brutal. We were heading straight into the wind. We tried skirting along the shore and crossing over so we could head up to the gov't dock, but it didn't work that way. Luckily, when we got across the cut, we were right at Pudding Point and were able to easily maneuver our way around Barraterre to Ann's Track and ended the trip there. 62 MILES!!!!! We kayaked 62 miles in about 4.5 days...not too shabby if you ask me. I was pretty proud of that. You can see the route we did if you click on the map below.
It wasn't a perfect trip by any means, and I learned a lot...but hey, I've got to start somewhere, right!? I know each trip I get under my belt will help me and make me a stronger paddler and guide.
