Actually, as far as rants go, this has been quite a civil discussion. I think our midwinter contemplative attitudes are in low, low gear. ; ) My wife and I paddled Dungeness Spit NWR/WA State Park combo on Juan de Fuca last saturday. We hoped there'd be a bit of surf on the beach from a 9 foot westerly swell on the outside. It turned out to be about a 1 foot swell where we were on the strait, so we turned to bird watching on glassy water. On the north shore of the spit we landed and walked up to the lighthouse. We made sure we were on the proper side of the NWR boundary as it is actually a sanctuary and none shall pass that line. A couple of refuge wardens showed up on quads and in a polite tone suggested we were not allowed to land our kayaks there. Instead, we were to use the sheltered south side of the spit as they were having problems with illegal camping on the spit and were in need of tracking boaters. In fact, she said, you must now call ahead to land. When she left I rolled my eyes and thought how pathetic a situation it is when hikers can walked up and down the 5 miles of spit and a boater has to call ahead. Perhaps the Feds standards are a bit whimsical, or perhaps they are reacting to unintended use, I don't know. I suppose the alternative is for them to be really uniform and some colichy bureaucrat in DC will invalidate all the guide books forever by ordering all boaters to call ahead of time to secure a lottery based permit at their division headquarters. Rob G *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Wed Feb 02 2005 - 11:43:56 PST
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