Ralph Diaz wrote: > 2. **Camping, etc.** Again, we are immediately looking at some epitome > of long distance sea faring. How many of you have really camped out of > your sea kayak. I bet less than half. The other half don't need all > that volume to put things into...they are day paddlers. If you really > want to camp, use a canoe. No sea kayak is as efficient at camping as a > canoe. It will swallow up large Coleman coolers, habachis, small > kitchen sinks. Well, I'll take Ralph's bait -- even though I can tell he is trolling! <g> I spent almost six weeks (two week-long excursions and two 2-week-long trips) last year camping out of my sea kayak. I had fresh food almost every day on those trips -- cabbage, apples, carrots, onions, and spuds keep for a long time in our climate out here, even in summer. I cooked over campfires on one of the trips (not my choice -- the others were committed to that), lounged in my Crazy Creek chair on sunny banks, fished for rockfish and ling cod, and generally had a wonderfully laid-back time. For the record, the two two-week-long trips were in the Charlottes, and the others were in Oregon, one on Owyhee Lake, near the Idaho border. Like others who regularly camp out of a sea kayak, I have a couple decades of prior experience backpacking, so the luxury of having an enormous hole (read: sea kayak) that can accept really heavy stuff and carry it from place to place makes camping out of a sea kayak seem like the height of luxury! I suspect Ralph's "style" of camping is a relic from campervan days, or the old canvas wall tent. The "style" of camping a sea kayak can handle is, like someone else said, more like what can be done from a minivan loaded with four kids and a dog! It is the coolest kind of fun I have. I should add, as was mentioned by someone from one of the Portland, OR, outfitters who also uses the same beaches I use, that the Pacific Northwest has a plethora of cool places to kayak-camp. I suspect Ralph has been "walking the dog" in Central Park too much, and the roller bladers and power-walkers have warped his perspective! More seriously, I see maybe half to two-thirds of the sea kayakers around here as regular campers, and the rest as not. Different strokes. Ralph is probably correct, if we took as our sample the folks on the list. -- Dave Kruger Astoria, OR *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************Received on Wed Feb 24 1999 - 17:02:10 PST
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