So today was the second day of our mini vacation. I slept in because I was up pretty late last night, but when I got up Cathy and I decided to go out to Clark Lake and get some kayaking in.
So we packed up the car and headed out. If you've been reading my blog for a while, you'll know that the last time I took my kayak out, I forgot to bring my seat with me. So I made absolutely sure this time that I had everything that I needed for both of the kayaks.
We got to the lake and got started inflating the boats. Inflation of both of them took about a total of 10 minutes. We then packed the stuff we had with us into them and I set Cathy afloat. She had never been out on hers before, so I had her sit in it while I pushed her out a little ways because her skeg was digging into the sand. So I pushed her out then went and grabbed all my stuff and headed out myself.
It only took Cathy a few minutes to get the hang of paddling. I was pretty impressed by how fast she picked it up. Her little Sevylor Bali also tracked REALLY well with the skeg on it. She could stop paddling and still just float forward for a good amount of distance before finally stopping and then starting to turn. My TK-1, on the other hand, starts to turn almost as soon as I stop paddling...so I'll be ordering that skeg for it really soon.
Here's a few pictures that we got on the trip. This first one is of Cathy after we were pretty much just starting out. If you look towards the left of the picture at the shore line, that's just about where we put the boats in at.
This is another one of Cathy that I took just a few minutes after that first one. I like the way that this picture turned out quite a bit.
And this last one is just a couple of swans and their baby that we saw once we had made it quite a way from where we started out. They came out of the weeds right after we passed them, but I had already put the camera back into the dry bag. 
We both had a lot of fun. By my estimates from looking at the map, we probably paddled about two miles altogether before we got back out of the water. Cathy took to it really well, and seemed to have a really good time.
While we were there a few other people were out on kayaks. They had some pretty nice hardshell kayaks that looked really nice. That got Cathy and I started discussing the possibility of getting some hardshell kayaks sometime in the future. For now we're just going to stick with the inflatables. But the option of moving to hardshells at some point in time might be doable...but the inflatables still have so many positives in my opinion.
After kayaking we headed home and then went to Outback for dinner. We both had really good meals. On the way home from dinner we stopped at Dunham's Sporting Goods and Cathy finally bought her own life vest. So now she doesn't have to try and use the crappy uncomfy orange vest.
Day two of our mini vacation was really great. Tomorrow we are probably just going to hang out. Maybe go do some shopping. It's supposed to storm tomorrow, so our original plan of going to the Science Center has been changed. We'll probably be doing that on Thursday now.
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