Labor day canoeing

The map showed a place named "Canoe Rental" within walking distance of our apartment, along a dirt road through some woods. Since we had no other transportation besides walking, I suggested we walk over and check it out. If "Canoe Rental" didn't have a canoe for us, we could continue walking down the canal, following the "Canal State Park Trail" also clearly marked on the map, until we had spent enough outdoor time to counter some of the electronic device time we had already spent that day.

After some protesting, because not all of us agreed that we had had too much electronic device time, the family set out on our adventure to check out "Canoe Rental." And in fact, there was a canoe for us at "Canoe Rental" -- a canoe with three seats.

Tim sat in the back, Jonathan in the middle, and I sat in the front. The weather was a little hot and humid, but not unpleasant under the shade of the trees in the woods. Unfortunately, the canal was a little too wide to be shaded by the woods, but we could stay in some shade if we paddled slowly on the sides of the canal.
 

That is a picture I took from the front of the canoe. See how lovely and green the area is? And how wide the canal is? The canals from my childhood in the desert west are not wide enough for canoeing.

The journey out was maybe a little bit less pure family fun time than should be admitted on a family blog. One of us in the boat was using the paddle somewhat randomly, sticking it into the water in a way that turned the canoe sideways or whacked the other paddles or sprayed canal water on the old lady in front. Others of us got angry and one told the first of us that he was banned from using the paddle at all, because he didn't know what he was doing. And then the first one protested that he did know exactly what he was doing. So the other two pulled out their paddles and told the first one to show us, and then we turned sideways and cruised right into a low lying tree, head first. And the old lady in front ended up getting scratches all over her face as she attempted to duck away from the tree and turn around backwards. (But she admits she might have deserved them at this point.) And as the canoe was turned back upstream, the whole family heard the common nature sounds of "why-did-we-even-have-to-do-this-anyway-I-didn't-want-to-come."

And then we were all huffy, and stuck in this three-seater canoe with each other, with nowhere else to go. Reader, we couldn't even jump out of the canoe and swim home, because there were turtles and snakes and other reptiles swimming around us in the canal water. And look again at that picture. It doesn't look like clean and clear water for a pleasant swim, does it? It does look pleasant enough for a picture of somebody else's adventure, and if I weren't telling you about what the adventure really was like you could look at that picture and imagine a serene afternoon with the people you love.

But that was only the beginning. It got better. The fact that one of us had a ban on using the paddle meant that we began to move forward some. And then after a little while the ban was rescinded with conditions. And by the time we had paddled out for 40 minutes, and then turned around and were paddling back with the assistance of the current, even the guy with the paddle ban admitted that the last part of the canoe ride was not as terrible anymore.


In total, we were out just over an hour. I thought we'd all end up badly sunburned, but in fact that extra humidity in the air, along with the low altitude, must have made the sun less harsh than I feared, and we came away pretty much as blue-white as we began. And an hour with an unaccustomed paddle is just about the right amount of time to help your shoulders remember that they have muscles inside them without making them sore for more than a couple of days.

I'm glad we did it. I like watching turtles and snakes from the safety of a canoe. And I do very much like the other people who were in my canoe, even when the journey wasn't as serene as the picture.