- Durflame Logs are fiery awesome!
- I am not graceful at all.
Remember how there had been a small craft advisory? And that it was lifted shortly before we got the kayaks? Well about an hour after we took the kayaks out onto the water and paddled away from Two Harbors, another small craft advisory was called. Which means that most of the time we were on the water that day, we were innocently and naively scooting along on water that we shouldn’t actually have been on. So that explains why some of it was so bad. Only we didn’t know any of that at the time.
Once we made it to camp we spent awhile just doing nothing. Just trying to catch our breath and repair our spirits. I have to be honest with you, I was a little shocked by what had just happened.
But as the sun got nearer to the horizon, we decided to get set up for dinner. I got out my Duraflame log and Mike built some sort of wood tripod around it. We lit the thing up and suddenly there was fire! Hooray! It was a nice big hot happy awesome fire.
I set up my tent. I was very happy to have a tent. The wind started to pick up and it started to get dark. We boiled water and made dinner and actually had a nice time. It is amazing how much a nice warm fire will do to pick up your spirits. Mike had some hot chocolate and it seemed like the greatest thing in the world.
Eventually we each crawled into our own tents to sleep. With the rain fly on my tent, I couldn’t see out, but I could hear how loud the waves were when they broke on the beach and it scared me a little to think about while I drifted off.
We woke up about 6am the next day. We needed to get an early start because we had to catch a bus in Two Harbors at Noon. So I got up and broke down my tent and packed everything up and loaded it into the kayak. It took Mike a little longer to get packed but that was okay because I was drinking some coffee and staring unhappily at the ocean (It was a very cinematic moment! I felt like I was in a movie about someone who hates the ocean!).
It looked like the sea had calmed down some, but the waves were still breaking really hard on the beach. Remember, this was only the second time that I had ever put a kayak out into water.
But finally it was time. Mike went out first and he managed to time it just right so that the suck-back from a wave pulled him out.
I went next, but didn’t time it right. I tried to ride a wave out, but a bigger one came in a second later and pushed the kayak sideways and back up the beach. It knocked me over onto my back and the kayak rolled over the top of me in the water. I jumped up, completely soaked and rolled the kayak right side up. I pulled it back out into the water and tried to line it up into the waves, I went a little further out, so the kayak was completely in the water. Another big wave came and went over my head, so both the kayak and I were pushed back into the beach.
At this point I must have looked like such a pitiful drowning rat that a guy ran out from one of the neighboring campsites to help. I remember he shouted to me, “I’m glad I’m not putting out in this!”
We only had a second before the waves came in again. He held the kayak pointed straight out and when the wave came in I jumped up onto it and paddled like crazy. I hollered back at the guy, “THANK YOU!”
That dude was awesome, whoever he was. The patron saint of under-skilled outdoorsman, that guy was.
Once I got out past the rocks and into the ocean, I took inventory. I was completely soaked all over with sea water. I had lost my bottle of water when the kayak rolled and I could tell from the way the boat moved that I had a lot of water in my drywell (the trunk) which was also where all my stuff was.
Luckily the current was pushing us back to the point. The waves were still rough, but nothing like they had been the day before.
As we neared the point, seals started popping out of the water. At first they were far away, but then they started to come in closer to bark at us. I think that they wanted to play. Or maybe they were like, “What the hell are YOU doing out here? Don’t you know there’s a small craft advisory right now?”
For my part, I was not happy about the seals because sharks eat seals and I was convinced that the seals were bringing the sharks closer, so I would yell at them, “Seals! Go Away! I do not like wildlife!”
Shortly after that several dolphins popped up between Mike and I. I barely saw them, but Mike said that there were a bunch. Several seals continued to follow my kayak while I yelled insults at them.
To save time we stayed further out to sea than the day before and made more of a straight line down the coast. With the current at our backs, we made it in about an hour and a half. By the time I pulled up onto the beach in Two Harbors, my clothes had dried, but I was covered in a thick layer of dried salt. It was pretty weird. I pulled my stuff out of the kayak and everything was soaked (even though it had been inside of a trash compactor bag).
We had enough time before the bus that I unpacked everything onto a picnic table so that it could dry.
We also got lunch (Mike’s third hamburger during out camping trip. I had a corndog. That’s how we camp, you got a problem with that?) Also, and quite happily, I had a Jack and Coke at the bar.
The “Safari Bus” we took from Two Harbors to Avalon was basically an old Blue Bird school bus. It was hot and dusty, but we kept the windows open for the breeze. It was a bumpy ride (imagine going off-road in a school bus and that’s about it), but the roads out of town led up along the high ridgelines, so the views were beautiful.
(View from the bus window)
It took about an hour to get to the little Catalina airport, where we switched buses and rode down (another hour) into Avalon.
Arriving in Avalon was like rolling into the big city! Multi-story buildings! Golf Carts! More than one restaurant!
The bus let us off basically around the corner from our hotel.
(Your humble author after surviving two days of hiking, camping and kayaking)
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