Monday, September 22, 2008

Desolation Sound

Continued unemployment has given me a great opportunity to spend 4 days sea kayaking around Desolation Sound (map, PDF 202kb). Christine, Nancy, and I rented a singled and a double kayak and met up with Rob, Genevieve, and Anouk in Okeover Inlet.

Christine and I started in the double kayak, known affectionately in the guiding community as "the divorce boat." As you can see, we evaded the curse of poor communication, shared decision making, and control issues.


Sea kayaks take almost the same effort to paddle no matter how much weight you put in them. I was surprised at the first meal when Genevieve pulled out mustard, dijon mustard, mayonnaise, pickles, salsa, corn chips, avocado, cucumber, bagels, cream cheese, and sweet chili sauce. I suddenly wished I had brought more than cheese and crackers for my lunch. Strawberry rhubarb pie is just one of many luxury items you can cram in to a kayak.

Our main campsite was incredible. We had an entire Curme island all to ourselves. I'm sure in July or August there would have been 6 other parties there, but in September, the entire 2 acre plot was ours alone.



The marine life was abundant with large flocks of common mergansers, seals, purple and orange starfish, a distantly seen finned mammal, dinoflagellates, and plenty of jelly fish, including this monster (about 1 foot across)

Finally there was plenty of paddling amidst beautiful arbutus lined coastal shores.


2 comments:

Nature Nerd said...

Man, am I jealous of your unemployment. So many good trips! And such an un-curmudgeonly posting.

Albinoblackbear said...

Ditto above comment.

Never heard the double referred to as the divorce boat. Hilarious.