The Players:
Julie and I were joined by five friends for four days of kayaking in the Apostle Islands
National Lakeshore in Lake Superior, Wisconsin. Dave and Denise, two of Matt's fellow co-workers,
decided to take this opportunity to test their relationship just two months before their wedding.
As we can attest to, kayaking in a two-person kayak, after a couple hours of paddling can
suddenly become a string of "are you still paddling?", "where are you steering?", "don't just set
your paddle in the water, do something with it!". They passed with flying colors and were
successfully married shortly after the trip. Steve, a former co-worker of Denise's was another
member of the crew. He
was the only one paddling a single kayak and quickly found that the extra 0.5 to 1 m.p.h. you get
with a two-person kayak adds up over the course of 6 or 8 hours of paddling. Dave, Denise, and
Steve were also participants in the
Isle Royale 2002 hiking trip. The final two members of our crew were Phoebe, a mutual friend of
ours from college, and her boyfriend Dave (a.k.a. "Slightly-Above-Average"),
who we discovered was in Anchorage, AK at the same time as
us during our 2001 trip.
The Route:
Over the course of a couple planning meetings we decided on the route depicted in the
map below. When we first started planning we had high hopes of hitting some of the little-explored
(relatively speaking) outer islands, but after a little reality check (we wouldn't be paddling 20
miles a day) we settled on a route that would not take us beyond the first tier of islands.
The Trip:
The links below will take you to pictures and brief summaries of each of the days.
Day 0: Drive to Bayfield, WI and take Basic Safety Course
Day 1: Kayak Bayfield to Oak Island
Day 2: Kayak Oak Island to York Island
Day 3: Kayak York Island to Sand Island and back
Day 4: Kayak York Island to Little Sand Bay, and Drive Home