Day 232

        Double Post!  Be sure to check out Day 231 post below...
Daily Stats
Start:        5:30 AM - Au Sable Point (Between East Tawas and Oscoda)
Break:        12:00-4:00 PM - Harrisville State Park
Finish        3:15 PM - South Point (near Negwegon State Park)
Time:        10:15 hours
Daily dist:    33 miles
Total dist:    4200+   
Companions:    Jerry (friend of Randy from Port Huron)
Weather:    Started out breezy out of NNW then windy from NE then calm
Notes:        Once again the wind ran almost the entire compass

Jerry joined me for about an hour this morning

Now would be a very bad time for me to commit a crime.  I’d simply have no place to hide.  At about 8:00 AM this morning a half mile from shore miles from anybody I know I came upon Jerry (who is a Friend of Randy Orchard who I stayed with last week).  Jerry was in the area helping his mother move and figured he’d see if he could catch up with me.  He checked the lake at a little park in Au Sable and sure enough there I was paddling by.  So he jumped in his truck and leap frogged ahead of me then paddled south to meet up with me on the water.  We paddled together for about a hour during which time I think I talked his poor ear off.  I’ve come to realize that I get a bit… chatty when I’ve been solo for a couple days.  Later in the day I pulled out at Harrisville State Park to take a break and was set up on a picnic table cooking lunch when up came a man I’d never seen before who said “hi Jake.”  Apparently he is a member of a Michigan paddling club who had seen on of the e-mails that my friend Steve had sent getting the word out about this trip.  Like I said, I can’t hide.

Today was a pretty good day overall.  The wind was already up when I launched early this morning and by 11:00 AM it was blowing out of the NE hard enough to make paddling north almost not worth it.  So I pulled out at the state park to take a break and let the wind hopefully die down.  After lunch while I was enjoying a nice nap on the beach the wind did drop to almost nothing.  Not being one to waist good paddling weather I jumped back in the kayak and pulled out 12 more miles before the day was through. 

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The view from my tent tonight

The scenery around here, I must say, is amazing.  Lush tree lined shores, sandy beaches, rolling green hills in the distance, and for me the most notable thing lately has been the sky.  With all the storm fronts that have been passing through lately the clouds and sky have been incredible.  On lake Erie the skies were mostly clear as I passed through and the most memorable thing was the flat calm water that ended almost every evening.  On Lake Huron it has most definitely been the sky I‘ve never seen so many textures and colors amongst the clouds, and I‘ll never forget it.  

I've said it before but, WOW!