Canoeing in Alaska, Part I
Some friends who moved to Alaska at the same time as my wife and I bought an Old Town canoe. Our families had rowboats and power boats, but canoeing was new to us. We loved it! We were introduced to the canoe while camping by a lake (duh!) in the Nancy Lake Recreation Area and discovering that the lake was a gateway to a canoe trail system made up of several lakes with portage trails in-between.
We went out and purchased a cheap Coleman canoe and outfitted ourselves to canoe camp. This mostly meant simply putting our backpacking packs in the bottom of the canoe. We were both used to car camping, and had done some backpacking. Using a canoe was a bit in-between. You could take more than pure backpacking, as the portages between lakes were not terribly long, and you got away from busy campgrounds with people having parties and playing music. Why people want to play music while camping has always escaped me, but that’s a separate topic.
What I grew to absolutely love was paddling the canoe and gliding silently across the water. It was quieter and more soothing than any previous experience with boats. I loved learning the strokes to keep the boat straight, or to turn it at will, as well as the teamwork involved with two people matching paddling strokes. It was magical.
The other thing I discovered a love for was the call of the common loon. It was such a cool sound track to a cool quiet morning on the lake. We ended up with a few pieces of art with loons.
We learned on this small lake system, and then discovered a much larger canoe trail system on the Kenai Peninsula. More of that in another post.