100 Miles – Day 1
I kicked off day one of my 100 miles to winter paddle on Friday evening. Back yard adventures happen quietly with no fanfare. We simply “begin”. It was getting dark, the sky was filled with a watercolor wash of deep blue and purple clouds. The air temperatures were hanging the in mid-fifties. This time of year at Devil’s Lake, you’d much rather be in the water than on it. The water is still holding the warm energy of summer. On thing is sure, for paddlers it’s much better to step into warm water when you launch than to start your day with cold, wet feet…
Autumn is a wonderful time to paddle, but you do need to dress for it, especially when the water begins to turn cold. We never imagine we’ll fall out of our boats, but the trick to staying safe is preparing for the unexpected. I’ll be wearing warm Kokatat Gore-Tex shells with a merino wool base layer throughout the fall and into winter. Once the water really cools down, I’ll switch to drygear which will keep my body dry, even if I did happen to take a swim. Staying warm and dry is key to avoiding hypothermia if things ever did go wrong.
Devil’s Lake State Park will still be quite busy on the weekends at least until the fall colors come and go. The Chateau still has their rental boats out on the beach and people are still braving the water for one last swim. At some point someone is going to have to get out and drag this table back to shore!
Just as it was growing dark and I was returning back to the north shore boat landing, I noticed a large number of Canada geese were gathering along the beach. They quickly swam out into the deeper water when they saw me coming. They won’t remain long before heading south for the winter months.
To keep me honest I’m using a program called MapMyRun to track the miles. On my first day I clicked of 3.42 miles. (I gained a bit by paddling up the stream in the south-west corner of the lake). Although I’m not worried about time, I did the trip in 1.03 minutes. I am curious if that will decrease over time as I just get into the swing of paddling the lake almost daily. We’ll see.. 97 miles to go…