Paddling Stuff

A different kind of kayak camping.

August 25, 2015 By drpaddle 4 Comments

I got to go paddling three times during our stay at Belfair State Park. Yippee! Sooz made this possible by agreeing to hang out with Wally and Tyler while I was on the water. This will surely cost me — and that’s only fair — and it was worth it.

This end of Hood Canal is fairly shallow, and the summer sun warms its waters to temperatures far more comfortable than you can find in most of the region, at any time of year. The water was also surprisingly clear for midsummer. Paddling alone, I stayed fairly close to the shore. I haven’t practiced self-rescue techniques for a while, so I thought I’d stay where I could swim (wade?) into shore if needed. Not needed though. What I mean is, I didn’t sink, and I didn’t dump. Good.

Doug heads out from the Hood Canal shoreline

When I lived in California, flat, saltwater kayaking like this was hard to find. Here in the Puget Sound region, it’s hard to get away from. Not complaining.

You can’t tell from the pic, but it was a little breezy and I was a little tentative on that first paddle — my first in more than a year. I didn’t venture too far, instead making “laps” back and forth in a half-mile area. It was fine. Getting back on the horse…

Kayak paddling along Hood Canal shoreline.

With the tide in, there were still some some tidelands showing, and these attracted birds, and I did what I do best with birds. I looked at ’em.

Here is what Tyler and Wally were doing while I enjoyed my little paddle. “Hey Tyler, what do you think we should do while Dad is gone and Mom is reading that book?” “Ah. Perhaps a nap, Wallace? I think yes. A nap!” “Okay. I’ll be right here beside you, prepared to grrrr if anything or anyone happens by, or possibly if a leaf falls. I wonder when it’s time for dinner. I really do.”

On our last full day at Belfair, I met a small contingent from the South Sound Area Kayakers — an Olympia-based club I’ve paddled with, sporadically, for many years — for a 12-mile paddle up to another state park and back. Great fun, and nice to catch up with one fellow I met years ago and who has done some amazing paddling trips lately. There was also the mandatory late arrival who held up the launch, forcing the group to carry their boats out farther and farther as the tide receded. We survived, and stopped for lunch at Twanoh State Park.

While we ate lunch and my fellow paddlers politely refused the store-bought cookies I had supplied, we enjoyed this view from our picnic table. Another lousy weather day in western Washington!

On this paddle we saw a few wild things… cormorants, a kingfisher, a few harbor seals, some Great Blue Herons, and the usual surfeit of gulls, traveling incognito. At the paddle’s end, I managed to find the deepest, muckiest mud for my landing spot, and a paste of salt and mud affixed itself firmly to Oscar Diggs’ hull. Cleaning it, a day later, was arduous, but also a good chance to catch up with neighbors who happened by.

Back at home, Oscar Diggs got a bath before returning to his hoist in the garage. I thought I got him clean and hauled him into the garage, only to see more mud — lots more — in a few spots I had missed. Back onto the lawn, and this time I got him clean.

So, yeah. Kayak camping used to involve careful stowage of just the right amount of food and camping gear into the boat, paddling off to some exotic locale, and then sleeping in a tiny tent on increasingly hard ground (that is, the ground got harder as I got older). Now, it’s sleeping in Toto’s deluxe master bedroom and toddling out to the water when… I feel like it. Not saying one approach is better than the other — neither is. But it’s nice to have the choice.

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Camping at the bitter end of Hood Canal

August 24, 2015 By drpaddle 3 Comments

I don’t know where I was there, for a while, but now I do. I mean I knew where I was, but I also knew I wasn’t writing. But now I am. I’ll explain later.

We took off last week for a six-day, five-night adventure at Belfair State Park in western Washington. We’ve been here before, but that was in late Fall and a little nippy. Quiet, though. This time, just a few weeks before schools are back in session, the place was packed. And not at all nippy.

By reserving precisely 9 months in advance we secured a “waterfront” site. I wanted to be able to do some kayaking without the hassle of carting the boat between campsite and launch point. Our site worked well for that, with a caveat: timing the tide.

Toto and Oscar Diggs in a stare-off with Hood Canal.

Our campsite T30 at Belfair State Park, just an hour or so after high tide. The only thing between us and Hood Canal was a path used by approximately 1240 people per day. Also, at max ebb tide, about a half-mile of mud and exposed seagrass and a lot of oyster shells.

Tidelands along the shores of Belfair State Park

At low tide our waterfront campsite became landlocked. Well, mudlocked. Here we have an example of a bad time to launch or land a kayak. Too much carrying a 50-pound boat over slippery mud and grass and sharp oyster shells. Still… beats real life.

But, hey, this trip wasn’t all about kayaking. There was scenery to stare at, a promised meteor shower, the mandatory dog-walks, and probably some work for me to do (clients always call just before we head out on a trip — in fact, I’ve learned that scheduling a trip is a good way to stimulate client demand).

Toto, some picnic table stuff, and Hood Canal.

It was 90 degrees the afternoon of our arrival. We focused on setup and dog-walking, and while we did that the tide rose. The timing of our trip resulted in high tides at early morning and early evening.

Note: this is western Washington, right next to Hood Canal, a fjord extending from Admiralty Inlet all the way to Belfair, some 45 miles. It’s August, but regardless, it’s supposed to be kind-of green. But it wasn’t, and it’s not. We’re sharing a drought with the rest of the west coast, and brown is the new green.

Campsite T30 as seen from the waterfront trail at Belfair State Park.

You can see that we had plenty of space in our campsite. Space enough, even, for Sooz to pamper the pooches with bowls of fresh water, delivered directly to them in the lounge chairs that are supposed to be for us humans. But. Because the ‘waterfront’ campsites are themselves fronted by a waterfront trail, some campers felt the need to access the trail through our campsite. In fact some felt that our campsite to be some sort of day use area. Many of these same campers were, apparently, immune to stinkeye. Eventually Sooz created a tasteful fence out of the plastic step-stools we use to get Oscar Diggs up to his perch atop TinMan.

Should you plan a camping or RVing trip to Belfair State Park in Summer? Maybe. There are many many many many many children, of all ages, riding skateboards and bicycles and hideous loud plastic annoying pretend cars pulled by bicycles, careening through the campground on the road designed for cars and trucks and RVs and suitably courageous pedestrians, and also on the aforementioned Waterfront Path, or did I say Trail.

I would like to provide photographic evidence of the camping-loop carnage, but I think I would then have to get signed releases from those boarders/scooters/bikers and that’s a higher level of organization than I’ve achieved as yet. But here’s a sense of how things look if you’re not in a waterfront campsite:

Kind-of crowded. The farther from the water, the more oppressive it felt. Yet it was completely full, so people are happy to be here, I guess.

But look, if you have the kids, or the boards, or the scooters, or the plastic cars, and you’re looking for a place to deploy them away from your home neighborhood, this might work for you. It clearly works for others.

So, for the moment, let’s leave it at this. You can have a lot of wondrous moments camping at Belfair State Park in Summer. You have to time things right, and some patience is required. But that’s okay, no? Yes. One wondrous moment:

This little feller is a Killdeer, I think. He (or she?) and I met on the waterfront early one morning and actually communicated telepathically. Oh probably not.

There is much more to report about this trip, and then some other stuff. I’ll get right on it.

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Team Toto’s other player

June 22, 2015 By drpaddle 1 Comment

The poor fellow has been taking something of a back seat over the last year, but he’s an important member of the team.

He is Oscar Diggs. This is his second name: originally he was The Nutmeg of Consolation. But to join the team, he needed a more totoesque name, and so.

He is a kayak, built in our garage, from a kit provided by Pygmy Kayaks of Port Townsend, Washington. I got the kit for almost nothing because my parents bought it for me as a gift. Under construction he looked like this:

Oscar Diggs in one of his formative stages.

Eventually we completed the Oscar Diggs build. On launch day in Gig Harbor, we learned that Tyler doesn’t really approve of paddlesports.

Tyler, on the dock, urges Doug to forget paddline.

“Dad, this is wrong. You do not go past the edge of the dock. You really want to get out of that thing and take me back onto dry land.”

“Will this thing really float? Are you sure you should be doing this?”

Finally, we convinced him to let me paddle around briefly.

Oscar Diggs on his maiden voyage — Gig Harbor Bay, Washington

And now we’ve rigged a way to take Oscar Diggs with us on camping trips to nearby bodies of water. Oscar puts up too much wind resistance (along with Toto) to take him on long trips.

When Oscar Diggs travels with TinMan, he gets the best view. Also, gas mileage plummets.

Speaking of long trips… we’re about to take one, into British Columbia for a couple of weeks. There will, we hope, be lots to show and tell.

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