paddling the lake

I built a rack for the car the day before yesterday, in order to carry 2 kayaks at once.  I had some scrap pieces of steel pipe that worked just fine.  I cut them to length and painted them black then attached them to the cargo rack. Yakima or Thule would have charged me a lot to sell me something that would look just the same, but in the end, do little better.
A month or so ago I picked up some pool noodles, those foam floating things that someone had thrown in their garbage bins.  Those, split down the middle and cut to length made good and colorful pads for the boats to rest on.

We went out and paddled the perimeter of the lake.  As we started out the water's surface was glassy, a reflection of the trees on the waters edge and the sky.  We seemed to be stalking a Heron, or so he or she might have thought as we would come up on it, it would fly down the waters edge around a corner into the next cove, and then we'd come up on it again.

We stopped for snacks, pulling up to a fallen tree in the water that was also a resting spot for a turtle who didn't seem to mind our company.  A woodpecker, with his bright red head didn't seem to mind us either as he took to the stump of the tree we were resting on.

The breeze came up eventually but not so much as to make the paddling difficult.  I generally prefer rowing to paddling but this was a good day to enjoy the effortlessness, the quiet, the proximity to the water that a kayak can offer.