My new favorite non-strenuous paddling activity: drifting along with my legs up on the bow of my inflatable kayak. Since I still had a bit of a residual cough from last week, I took this trip easy. I launched from my standard dock on Lake of the Isles.
For some reason, there were turtles sunning themselves everywhere during my relaxing paddling trip.
The goal of this trip was just to float around and not necessarily go any place in particular. I did make it out to the connecting waterway between Lake of the Isles and Cedar Lake. A few weeks ago, a large tree had fallen into the waterway and obstructed the path.
The tree had evidently been cut down into pieces and dragged off to the side of the waterway. I’m surprised they didn’t haul it away, but perhaps they couldn’t get a large enough boat into the waterway due to the very shallow water levels. I wonder if they will haul the tree out from the shore one day?
After getting within sight of Cedar Lake, I turned around and decided to spend some time floating with my feet out over in Lake of the Isles.
There wasn’t much traffic on the lake, but a few families in canoes and fellow kayakers were lazily drifting around. The water was fairly still and the sun was nice and warm.
I stuck around the islands just east of my dock. Despite the multiple “Do Not Land” signs, I did see signs of people landing on the islands.
The water level was still quite low, and the amount of aquatic plant life was quite high. Although these “weeds” provide fish a nice shady place to swim, they do get tangled in my paddles.
I’m in a completely different part of the lake, but my legs are in the exactly same position as the picture earlier in this post. Strange. The inflatable kayak lets me lean back quite a bit and rest my head on the inflatable chair. I doubt I could do this with a hardshell recreational kayak (comfortably, at least).
There were happy clouds drifting overhead.
I was drifting in a small waterway between islands that was home to a number of turtles, birds and other animal life. The weather has been a bit chilly at night, but the day was quite warm today. The turtles seemed to pay no attention to me.
This appeared to be one of the more common hardshell turtles, but there was a larger turtle that had a more soft-shell appearance. None of these turtles were nearly as large as the large snapping turtle I saw just under the water near Brownie Lake.
Quite a boring trip, yet I enjoyed my drifting time in the sun. Hopefully my cough will pass, so that I can finally get back to paddling. With my daughter coming soon (ack!), I am unsure if I’ll get out on the lakes much more this year (or next?). Hopefully I can squeeze in a few more trips, but I doubt there will be any out-of-town locations. My quarantine in the apartment may be over, but I’m still under orders to stay in town.
