Kayaking on Blackstone river/Great Meadow

More social distancing! Kayaking on the weekends. 

First one is blackstone river and canal. This is in central Mass. Blackstone river is a very shallow, and quiet river. "Nice!" I thought at first. Then, 0.3 mile of kayaking, we had to land, carry kayak on the stairs to walk over the dam. Grrr. This was a tough part. The kayak is heavy on the stairs. For sure it was a good training for arm muscle. 

Quiet Water

Other than that, the kayaking was nice.  The water was extremely calm and quiet. It was a sunny day without winds, meaning perfect for kayaking. One challenging part was that the water was too shallow sometimes and had to find a way for a deeper water portion. It was an adventure. 

Below 2 pictures are nice red-winged blackbird and a heron. Nice to see them. More kayaking, I have more opportunities to see red-winged blackbirds. Then more and more convinced that blackbirds are real bullies. They chase big birds aggressively. I saw they chased away herons, who are at least 5 times bigger than them, and also chased away hawks. It is funny. 

Flowers for sure

A couple of weeks later, we went kayaking on Great Meadows National Refuge. We had kayaked in the Great Meadows before, but we did a different portion this time. Now we saw flowers that were not bloomed last time. They are flowers for sure, but I don't know what flowers (the left picture). Please let me know if you know! Nice purple ones.

Canada Geese

Clouds formed

Then a Canada geese family! A couple of weeks ago we saw a Canada geese family, but that time babies were much much smaller. However, this time babies were almost the same size as mother! Wow. Only evidence they are babies of the mother was following mother. Probably they need to move to south where there is no winter, so babies need to grow quickly. Long journey ahead for them. After a few hours of kayaking, we saw thunder clouds formed and heard thunder in the distance, so we kayaked back to the starting point and left. 

Relaxed kayak!