Although I have been too busy in recent months to do more than monitor PaddleWise's interesting twists and turns, I was inspired by Ralph's looking back to pre-paddle days to reminisce about several areas I still dream about visiting with a loaded kayak and a calendar free of time constraints. Long ago, when I was a teenager and was into bicycling everywhere in Canada, I reached the shores of Great Slave Lake via the Mackenzie Highway. After hundreds of miles of dust and endless forests, the shimmering, foggy waters of that Ice Age sea reminded me of the haunting shorelines of Lake Superior, which I had bicycled around two years before, and which is now my sea kayaking home turf. I have since periodically studied maps and pondered the idea of paddling for adventurous miles on the Great Slave Lake. Several years after the NWT trip, I again found myself bicycling up gravel roads, this time up the west coast of Newfoundland and across on a ferry to the southern tip of Labrador. The haunting starkness of the Newfie coastline, the icebergs, and the windswept bays have often popped into my imagination while daydreaming on paddle tours elsewhere. My final dream destination was the Alaska panhandle fjord country which I saw several times while returning from summers in Alaska's mainland. I had the opportunity to return to this area in 1985 and kayak from Juneau to the headwaters of Glacier Bay and back. The immensity of this great landscape makes it almost a must destination for any sea kayaker, much as a trip to Mecca would be for an Islamic pilgrim. I have been fortunate to be able to carry out many of my wandering dreams, yet many more of these will remain unfulfilled. But that's OK; when you run out of dreams- you're at the end of the road. If you have read this far, thanks for listening, and don't forget to dream as well as look back. -Andy Knapp Minneapolis 40 degrees F -is that spring in the air? *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
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