Kayaking

(This post covers July 29 through August 2)

We started out the week working uneventfully – but fruitfully – in the visitor center; and working diligently to prepare for our kayak adventures during our three days off.

Thursday morning I drove down to Bayfield and picked up the rental kayak. By the time we had schlepped our gear around and organized ourselves it was 2:30 and there was a good bit of wind and wave activity in the bay. Given that, we decided we would paddle out a bit just to get our “sea legs”. Once launched – without incident – we felt pretty good. The two-person kayak is very stable in waves that were probably about two feet – no more than three –so we decided to head for York Island, which is about four miles from Little Sand Bay. We made it in about an hour – a tumultuous hour – and got around to the lea side of the island where there is a beautiful bay with three campsites (and a toilet).

The water there was flat calm when we pulled up on the beach and ate lunch while enjoying the view of islands that we cannot see from Little Sand Bay, including lighthouses on nearby Raspberry Island and distant Devils Island.

We paddled back home – into the west wind – in about an hour and 15 minutes.

It was a very good first day in the kayak.

Friday we were better organized and got underway to Sand Island – also about four miles distant – at about 11:30. This time we headed out into the west wind and again traversed the open water to the island in about an hour.

Sand is much larger than York and there is a lot more to see there, including a lighthouse.

Earlier in the week I had helped change out the volunteers that staff the island, so I had some advance intelligence about the things to do and see on Sand Island.

We started by paddling past some sea caves on the southern shore and then stopped at the main dock where there is a house where the volunteers/staff live. There are also camp sites and a toilet (note: it is very difficult to pee when you are wearing a wet suit and locked into a kayak by a spray skirt, which may have something to do with my mentioning the presence of toilets for the second time in this post).

We are considering coming back to AINL next year, possibly to staff a lighthouse on an island; possibly the lighthouse on Sand Island. So we had more than a passing interest in the housing facilities.

From there we paddled further up the shore; past some bigger, more extensive, more spectacular, sea caves.

This photo of our camera's final resting place was taken with Betsy's i-phone.

Betsy got some awesome photos of these caves with our small, lightweight backpack camera.

I would love to include some of those photos in this post but, unfortunately, those images are still in the camera; and the camera is at the bottom of Lake Superior.

After a few choice words – and absolutely no consideration of going into the 50-degree water after the camera – we proceeded on to another quiet, sandy beach where we disembarked from the kayak (not as easy as it sounds), changed from wetsuits to clothes (not as easy as it sounds) and hiked the mile or so through the woods to the lighthouse (much easier than getting into and out of kayaks and/or wetsuits).

Although this lighthouse is not in nearly as good of shape as the Raspberry Island lighthouse it is very cool and very beautiful with awesome views of the lake and the Minnesota coastline 30-some miles to the north.

The volunteer gave us a nice tour. Interestingly, he is the former mayor of Madison, Wisconsin.

We hiked back to the kayak and paddled back to Little Sand Bay on calm waters and arrived in time to join the other volunteers and some seasonal rangers in Bayfield for the all-you-can-eat fish fry, a Friday night tradition in northern Wisconsin.

We now have just three more days of volunteer work in the visitor center and we will be pulling out Wednesday, heading south to the Iowa State Fair.