Kayaking Cottonwood Lake to Wasilla Lake - July 27, 2013

I was looking online at Meet-Up Group events and noticed a group was going to kayak from Cottonwood Lake to Wasilla Lake one day that I actually had off from work. It sounded like fun to me, so I signed up. It was a leisurely day, and I'm not sure how many miles we kayaked but it was definitely fun!

We got a quick refresher in how to kayak and directions on how to get back to the kayak place, and we were on our way. It wasn't a sunny day, but it wasn't raining, either. And it wasn't cold. That's a relative win for the Alaska summers I've experienced!

First, I thought a map might help so you can see where we went. As I said, we started in Cottonwood Lake and made our way to the NE side of Wasilla Lake.

Starting out on Cottonwood Lake

Part of our group catching up

I still love seeing float planes parked in front of a house like it's normal. It doesn't get old!

Heading toward the first passage to the next lake...

We got to go through this culvert... fun!

It might not look like a good spot to kayak, but it worked just fine. Kinda fun being in the "thick" of plants, actually.

We had one spot where we had to portage across a road. This is the other side of that road where we were resting for a few minutes before continuing on.

I just love the visual texture of these leaves.

A couple Red-necked Grebes hanging out with us.

A Red-necked Grebe

It was a fun day to spend outside on the water! 'Til next time...

Another AK Bucket List Item - Kayaking on Eklutna Lake (9-1-12)

Okay, so maybe my bucket list isn't full of hard to reach goals and places to visit, but it IS full of things that I would regret I didn't do if I ever leave Alaska without doing them. And this is another thing on that list: Kayaking on Eklutna Lake.

I've always wanted to go kayaking on Eklutna Lake. I've walked along it, hiked up to great views of it, and walked on it (during winter), and each experience has been quite different from the others. But until now I had not gotten to kayak on it. There is a company that offers bike and kayak rentals at the lake (there’s a great path to bike along around the lake), and a friend had a Groupon for a kayak rental. It worked out with our schedules that we could both go on the same day, so despite the rain and low clouds, we went out on the lake for a few hours. It was beautiful… trees were starting to change, and the water is a very pretty aqua color. It was a lot of work to kayak with the wind, but counter-intuitively it was actually easier to steer going into the wind on our way back to the landing. It really didn't rain on us until the very end of our time out there, so it worked out very well. I’ll have to do this again on a sunny day… I know that’ll be another different experience, too.

Given that we were out on a big (and up to 200' deep) lake, it was raining, and I'm clumsy at inconvenient times, I did not bring my SLR camera on this trip. I did have my phone though, and got a few photos with it along the way (and kept it in a waterproof case the rest of the time!).

The shoreline across the water from the side where we started, and where the bike path is. I had no idea it was rocky over there!

This was our spot where we decided to get out and have a snack and rest for a little while before working our way back to the boat landing.

Shaun is ready to get going again (aside from the missing paddle in the photo)!

Almost back to the boat landing, and you can see it has started raining. Still a great day out on the lake!

'Til next time...