> Just got back from a long road trip with my kids, 10 and 11. We went from Los Angeles > to North Dakota, and back, by a very circuitous route, and we drove about 8000 miles in > 55 days. I decided I didn't want to try tenting with the kids for that long - if it was > just me I might have done it. So I bought a secondhand motorhome, and paid a repair > shop to install cleats and eyebolts on the roof. That's more difficult than it sounds, > since a motorhome roof is strong when taken as a single piece, but it doesn't have many > individual strong points on it. I carried three sit-on-tops: two Ocean Kayak Pocos, about 9 feet, and a Scupper Pro, about 15 feet. I had them upside down on foam pads, and I had straps and ropes running all over the place. I had a constant movie playing in the back of my mind: large yellow and green plastic things in my rear-view mirror, tumbling down the road. Through constant attention and good fortune, all three boats remained on the roof the entire time. The cleats and eyebolts seem to be OK so far too, although I noticed that a couple of eyebolts rotated to a new orientation, 90 degrees to the strap hook that I had placed in them. I guess that much load would cause a twist like that. I thought that we would be unloading and using the kayaks often, but since it's such a physical and mental challenge to insure that the tiedowns are right, I found myself unloading the boats only a few times during the trip, usually when we were going to be in the same place for more than a day. We paddled them on Lake Tahoe, Lake Pend d'Oreille, and Antelope Lake and Silver Lake in the Sierras. (We drove right past Flathead Lake without stopping. I know that will upset a couple of Paddlewisers, but that was the part of the trip when my wife had joined us for a week, and we had a flight in Spokane that we had to get her to.) I was just as interested in fishing as in touring, but when I was with the kids we usually just paddled. The kids are still of two minds about paddling. They don't like the work, even though Pocos are very light and ideal for small kids (my kids weigh about 50 and 60 pounds). But they do like getting to remote places where they can play on deserted beaches and watch ospreys and eagles. I will have to be careful in the future to see that their outings are low effort and high payoff, and see if they eventually learn to like paddling for its own sake. *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced/forwarded outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
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