Kayaking for Jenny’s Birthday
We have a neat little tradition, my wife and I do. When we get near each person’s birthday, the birthday person chooses a weekend, and then chooses some activities to do for the weekend. The idea is that part of the birthday person’s gift is a weekend to do whatever sort of things they want. In the past, we have gone camping, bicycle camping, on trips to NYC, attended cultural events, done photo walks, etc. This year, for Jenny’s weekend, she originally wanted to go camping. With some iffy weather, though, she decided to bump the camping to a better weekend, and instead we would go out kayaking and do a bunch of outdoors stuff.
Today (Saturday–yes, I know, it’s now Sunday already!) was kayak day. We were jointly looking for something we hadn’t kayaked before, and chose Lake Arthur at Moraine State Park. I did a bit of background research on Friday evening, and we made our plans to go.
We woke up around 9:00 to get things ready to go. At 9:30, the tones dropped and I went on a fire call for a possible oven fire. We were canceled shortly thereafter, and I came home so that we could finish our preparations and get out the door. After loading our stuff at home, our first stop was breakfast and Jenny’s place of choosing: Ladles. Then we got the kayaks and support stuff out of the storage unit and onto the car, and we took off for Lake Arthur.
It was a beautiful day on the lake. We spent a few hours exploring after launching from Watts Bay. It was a pretty windy day, so it was a little choppy. That just made it all the more fun, though! We spent a lot of time enjoying the sailboats and windsurfers. Someday, maybe we’ll add to the watercraft collection with a small sailboat. It was just great to be out there, though.
I took the D90 along in a dry bag for some on-the-water photos. I’ve taken the D700 in the past, but it’s pretty large. I’ve been enjoying having the D90 available for the bicycle trips, where I wanted something that was a bit smaller and that I’d feel less horrible about if something tragic happened to it. It makes some great photos, though I can definitely tell the difference between it and the D700. Today, it was the perfect camera to have in the boat, as I was finding myself working quickly to avoid getting pushed into the lee shore while still being oriented in generally the right direction for the photo that I wanted. I captured a few good shots, including this one of Jenny and a sailboat that was running parallel to us for a while.
After we were finished on the water, we took up a bench to read for a while before getting dinner at the fun Log Cabin Inn on Rt. 19.
Day two for Jenny might include a show at Hartwood Acres or possibly some other outdoor stuff. In any case, we always seem to have fun doing these things with each other, so I can’t wait to see what she wants to do!
