Kayaking on North Conway Lake

Our priority for the weekend activity is backpacking. If Saturday and Sunday are both sunny, we go backpacking. If only one of them is sunny, we go day hiking or kayaking. We mostly go hiking, but it is also nice to go kayaking. Variety is good. 

A weekend in September, we went kayaking on North Conway Lake in New Hampshire.  It is in the town of Conway and the lake is very close to Maine actually. 

First 2 miles only I paddled. Even though our kayak is for 2-person one, I like to paddle by myself for a little. For my solo part I like to record the activity with app called Runkeeper. It records where and how the activity goes with GPS. 

My activity log

Since I paddle at the front of 2-person kayak, it is difficult to go straight. It is hard to keep straight from front. Kayak or canoe, direction control is mostly done by a rear person. For that reason, my kayaking record path is very wavy. It is very funny. 

As you can see in the left picture, my line of paddling is left-right-left-right.....due to this I paddled 2.5 miles, but maybe less than 2 miles of actual contribution of the whole trip. Importantly, however, I didn't paddle on the ground as indicated by red line. I think that GPS was not accurate or shape of lake is not correct on the map. By rain it is easily bigger on the day of kayaking. Or the size of lake gets different as time goes by.

After I paddled 2.5 miles, Mr.N took over and now he paddled for a while by himself. I ate sandwiches, and drank water and chilled. It was a princess time. Mr.N paddled 2 or 3 miles, then suddenly got cloudy and very windy. Due to that we decided to go back. Unfortunately winds were against us to go back to the starting point. It was better to go back as soon as possible, so we took the straight line: meaning paddled in the middle of the lake. Usually it is better to paddle along the shore as you can see in the GPS log above, but sometimes it needs to be flexible. 

Winds made a lot of waves on the lake, so our kayak bounced a lot. We got wet, but paddled together as strongly as possible. After an hour of hard paddling, we safely arrived at the parking lot. Wow. What an adventure!

９月のとある週末、ニューハンプシャー州にあるコンウェイ湖へカヤックへ出かけた。

MrNと私の週末のプランは、もし土日とも天気が良ければバックパッキング、もし片方だけ天気が良ければその日にデイハイクかカヤック。デイハイクに行くことの方が多いが今回はカヤックすることにした。バラエティに富んだアクティビティが我々は好きなのだ。

我々のカヤックは２人用なのだが、最初は私一人で漕ぐことにしている。筆者は記録が好きでランキーパーというアップでアクテビティを記録している。やはり自分の記録となるので一人で漕がないと自分の記録にならない！ということで最初の２、５マイル（４キロ）は私一人でのカヤック。上の写真がGPSでの記録。ぎゃー。酔った人の歩いた記録みたい。。。GPSが悪い。。。のではなく、GPSは正常かつ正確。２人用のカヤックを一人で、しかもフロントの席で漕いでいるとなかなか真っ直ぐ進むのが難しい。通常カヤックは後ろの席の人が方向をコントロールしているのでこういう結果になった（笑

そして４キロ漕いだ後はMrNにバトンタッチ。ここから私はしばしリラックスタイム！至福の時だ。まず、ランチに持ってきたサーモンサンドイッチをカヤック上で、しかも湖上で食した。美味しい。贅沢な時間だ。

そしてMrNが４−５キロ漕いだので写真でも撮るかなーと思っていると、なんだか急に雲が出てきて一気に風が出てきた。しかも風は逆風。逆風に向かってスタート地点に引き返さなければならない事態に。天気が悪いのですぐに戻った方がいい。ということで湖の岸沿いに漕ぐのではなく最短距離の湖の真ん中を突っ切ってスタート地点に引き返すことに。

風が強いので湖の波も大きくカヤックも揺れまくった。２人がかりで筋肉痛になるまで１時間一生懸命漕いでようやく元の場所に戻ることができた。ついた時は身体中濡れていた。ぎゃー。予期せずすごいアドベンチャーとなったが。。。楽しかった。