'Round The Block Balladeer: 2022

So I bought a kayak. Shortly after my 70^th birthday. After twenty years of backpacking all over California, I decided I was not willing to carry a fifty pound pack up a mountain any more. I had played around with starting out on The Pacific Coast Trail with my gear in one of those two-wheeler carts that the deer hunters use to carry their prize back to the truck. But that was going to be a lot of pushing and pulling, even if they gave me a permit. And of course, no one answered the phone during the shut-down for a permit. And Border Patrol would spot me with the cart and figure I was undocumented

The idea was now to have your kayak carry everything for you. I live ten minutes from a marina, so I thought it would be easy to practice the skill set and get lessons. Ha. The UCLA Marine Center at my marina was starting their summer sessions for kids. The only time an adult could rent a kayak would be during weekday mornings at 6:00 am. $30.00 an hour – but only for one hour. There was a hotel on the marina that rented kayaks at $30.00 an hour but you could only reach them sporadically after 11:00 and you had to make reservations a day in advance. REI gave Sunday morning lessons for a large amount of money, so I did sign up for two of them: a beginner course and a ‘how not to drown in your kayak’ lesson.

That helped, but I discovered I was disadvantaged for the ability to climb back into the kayak after a spill. I’m 6’8” and am mostly legs. The hop up on the back and crawl forward technique didn’t work. The hop up over the middle and twist into horseback position didn’t work, I’d just pull the kayak back over upside down again. There was one where you pull a flotation device on one end of your paddle and tie a rope around the whole thing to create a stirrup for your foot. That one worked, but it seemed easier to me to just tow the kayak to land and empty out the water by standing over it and just relaunch. The REI classes were geared to ocean kayakers which was not of great interest to me. I had just finished “Voyage of a Summer Sun” by Robin Cody, a nonfiction journal of going down the Columba River in a canoe. He fell out at one point and didn’t want to risk trying to climb back in so he accompanied the canoe downriver a few miles to a place where he could climb out on a riverbank and pull the canoe in.

Years ago, as a Boy Scout leader, at Emerald Bay on Catalina Island, we took a bunch a scouts in life preservers and snorkel masks on a lengthy swim through a heavy forest of seaweed to an underwater cave that was accessible in the afternoons to explore a little. It was amazingly easy to swim and stay afloat in a life preserver.

There was another video on YouTube showing you how to climb back in from the front, but I haven’t tried that approach yet. My practice spot in the Marina near me has a really high bacteria count, so I decided to wait.

So there were logistical issues with doing a river trip without a support system to help you launch and help pick you up. With solo backpacking you might be able to hike back to where you parked. Returning up river seemed a bit daunting for a beginner. I was imagining locking my bicycle at the end of my trip down river and going to launch upstream where I’d leave the car and then ride the bike back to the car after. Then return to get the kayak with the car. A fifty mile bike ride really isn’t much after four days in a kayak.

Anyway, I decided a lake would be a better option. Lake Folsom just south of Sacramento seemed like a good possibility. It had 75 miles of coast and camping spaces and boat ramps, etc. I drove out on the peninsula part when I was up there playing music at the Sacramento County Fair and it looked great. That side of the lake was remote and, after the summer season, without the families camping with thousands of kids in tow, it seemed perfect. I could just do the coast and turn around and come back when I wanted. The plan was to do four days with camp gear and food, all on the kayak.

Oh, and I bought a used kayak off of Facebook Shopper’s thingee. The original plan was to buy an inflatable new one once I was ready to do a trial trip. But I realized renting the Marina kayaks at $30.00 an hour would quickly eat up the budget. So after a couple of false leads, one of which was a lady that was going to leave her kayak with her uncle so I could take a look, but then never responded with an address for the uncle – and another where I drove fifty miles for a look at a kayak that was too small for me to fit in. I finally found one, a sit-a-top one that was right for my size and could handle 250 pounds which was me and my gear. The guy was a fisherman and had added detachable pontoons to the back to increase the stability. For my purposes I thought this was great.

So I drove another two hours to his house. The other consideration for buying it was it had to fit inside my van. I do have a luggage rack on top, but who wants to have to lift the thing up and secure it and then get it off and back on each time. I handed him the money, saying the requirement was it had to fit inside. I wasn’t really sure he would hand the money back if it didn’t. It did! With only an inch sticking out and bungee cords worked to hold my back gate down.

Off I went home. The guy had thrown in a paddle and a cheap life preserver, a little folding seat and anchor, I replaced everything but the paddle. But will probably get a bigger paddle for the next trip. Bought some other stuff. A quick snap off with floaters for your anchor should you be anchored as a speedboat passes. Got a couple rubber stow bags from my kids as a birthday present. And I discovered that bear kegs float. Having three left from the backpacking days, I repurposed one, gave it a belt that would hold an old can opener and would work to snap it onto the kayak. It was also perfect for adding a GoPro camera mount to the top. I had to remove the foot rests all together, these just came off the rail back by my rear end. My feet are actually suited to using the very end of the leg space on this one.

This is a Journey 12 Sun dolphin, probably at least ten years old. The bottom is a bit scuffed up and I replaced the foam knee pads on the sides with new thicker foam which I just glued on top of the worn away ones. It floats. Olive green, with a couple of California Lake permit stickers on the right side. Nothing very fancy. I travel light: Sleeping bag, ground fiber cloth, a couple of battery powered lights, a backpacking stove and a tea kettle for heating water. One plastic cup. Plastic plates. First Aid kit. Sun Screen. Mosquito net for the head. Hat and maybe two changes of clothing. And a paperback book. I had to create my own vinyl covered map of the lake. More about the map later. There were none to buy. A tiny Mp3 player with earphones that I use for my morning bike rides.

You apparently can buy detailed downloadable maps to use on your big fishing boat which will tell you up-to-date data on what fish are biting where. But as they emailed me, ‘Nothing printable.’ I’m going to rely on my IPhone while I ‘m out paddling with one hand?

So off I go to Folsom Lake. The original idea was to do the Peninsula Campground, I thought I could just drive down to the launch area and shove off, leaving my car in the parking lot there for four days. I was paying for a campground space there. Then they closed the camp and the boat launch. I moved the reservation to Beal’s Point on the west side of the lake. Then they closed the boat launch there, but they told me I could use Granite Bay’s launch and just drive all the way down to the water there. Cool. Off I went. I was a little nervous about leaving my car on the beach at Granite Bay since my camping spot was down the road at Beal’s Point, but the gate people said it was ok. I launched at 9:00 am the first morning and went north, shadowing the coast line north. Paddled all day, stopped for lunch part of the way up to Rattlesnake Bar. I got hungry and had to pee, but wasn’t sure how to do either sitting in the kayak with the bear keg out of easy reach up front and I hadn’t looked at any ‘how to pee’ videos while in a kayak. Discovered the joy of slipping in the mud above your landing spot and landed on my rear, but didn’t hurt anything.

Circled about at Rattlesnake Bar, since there didn’t seem to any water coming in from the American River, I just headed back. I didn’t judge the time well. Found myself still far from home with the sun beginning to set. I paddled harder. I kept thinking I should find a place to stop. I was prepared to camp overnight. Then the sun went down and there was no Moon at all. It was pretty impossible to see where a good place to land might be. Then I found a pick-up truck with the owner and his dog right at water’s edge with his headlights on. He seemed to be sitting at the end of a thin peninsula. I asked if he minded if I pulled around him and camped further behind him. He said sure, that he wasn’t staying anyway. Behind him the landing seemed only eighteen inches above the water. I docked and put my anchor out as a safeguard and started setting up a place for the sleeping bag and bags. He grabbed his dog and turned around and left me there. I tried turning on my little camp light, but the bugs swarmed it so I scraped them off and settled down there, wearing my mosquito netting. Without the light there were no bugs, but I discovered the mesh kept my face warmer so I slept in it.

I went right to sleep. At, what I guess was about ten o’clock, there was a loud speaker announcement from somewhere across the bay: “There is a Chrysler Town and Country van parked illegally on our beach. Your sticker is for a camping spot at Beal’s Point, not at Granite Bay. We are closing the park and locking you in. You will be receiving a citation!”

I stood up and yelled across the water as loudly as I could, “I couldn’t find the car!” I didn’t really think anyone heard me. There was no answer. So I crawled back into my sleeping bag and went back to sleep. Sometime in the middle of the night the wind was blowing and there were waves slapping the rocks around me. I checked the kayak. It was secure. I gathered everything I had out and stuffed it into the rubber bags and closed them in the hopes that everything remained dry and nothing floated away. I had printed out the tide tables for the lake before coming. They indicated that there was to be two and a half feet difference between low tide and high tide. There was no tide change at all that I could perceive. Perhaps that was based on a full lake?

Anyway, in the morning, in the sun, there was my van sitting directly across the bay from me. After breakfast and packing everything up, I paddled across to it. I pulled the kayak out and anchored it and went up to the car. I thought I’d better go talk to the front gate park folks before leaving the car here for a second day. So I drove away. I asked at the front gate, and the lady asked if there was a ticket on my windshield. I told her no. She said, ‘They would have left it on your windshield if they had issued you one.’ No citation. Ok. I’d go back to the kayak and decide what to do next. When I returned to where I left it, there was no kayak. I drove around and around the area, thinking that I might have been mistaken about where I left it. No luck.

A guided horseback group went by and south along the coast. The leader yelled at me, ‘You’re off road and you are going to pop a tire!’

“I’ve lost my kayak!’

‘Bullshit!’ he yelled back. ‘You’re trying to fish illegally! Go back down to the roads.’

“F**** you! I’m lost my kayak!”

Anyway, I gave up and went back to the front gate and told them my sad story. I asked them to make a note of it if anyone reports a loose kayak with no one around.”

They said they would. I went back to look again. After another hour of searching I returned to the front. The lady said someone had reported one as they were leaving. She high-lighted on a single sheet map where it might be. I went back and walked the entire area on foot. Nothing. I went back up again and asked them to contact the police because I wanted to file a report with them. I had about a $1,000.00 invested in equipment and kayak and figured at least my insurance might reimburse me part of it. The cop came and took the report and gave me his card and the report info. He said he was going to go down to take a look himself. I was on the phone with my wife in Los Angeles, when he called to say he thought he had found it. He came back and I followed him.

There it sat, well pulled up out of the water and the anchor reset in the sand, about two miles north of where I left it. And a good mile beyond where the Front Gate lady said it had been reported. All my bags and gear and life vest seemed to be there. I thanked the cop profusely and decided to load it all up to return to my campground to make sure everything was still there. I had a GoPro and battery packs and all my stuff in the bags, that didn’t look like they had been touched, but I wanted to be sure. It was getting a little too late to go back out anyway. Nothing was missing at all.

I decided that the guy that reported it was probably the guy that took it. He was a couple of miles from his car and decided it was easier to paddle rather than walk back. So my little used kayak will be christened with a new name. I’ll probably paint it on the bow before the next trip: “Free Ride Willy”

The next couple of days were pretty uneventful, except that if you strike up a conversation with somebody on the shore, absolutely none of them know where they are. But they will talk about their dog that they are playing with by throwing sticks in the water for them.

I also realized, while driving back to Los Angeles, my home made map from a brochure about the lake was piteously inaccurate because the shoreline had shrunk in about a mile or two from its original shore.

So a last day conversation with another kayaker out on the lake made me realize that my fantasy about taking the American River down to the Sacramento River and then going out the Delta to the East Bay, might be a much longer trip than I expected. The next time I talked to my daughter in San Francisco, I told her it might be three years before I call her from the East Bay to come pick me up.