Paddling Big Sur

by Erik Olsen on

We haven’t posted a good paddling link in a while, so I figured it was time.

National Geographic Adventure
has got a nice little piece
on paddling Big Sur. This is surely one of the great California trips. I was in the Channel Islands paddling just a few
weeks ago, and one of the guides there mentioned Big Sur to me when I asked him about other great Cali locales, so it
was with a dose of pleasant surprise that I came across this story in Nat Geo.

The swells in the area can be dangerous, and of course it is close to the notoriously Great White rich feeding grounds
of Piedras Blancas, but it’s ridiculously rare for sharks to attack kakayers…not that this makes the thought of
paddling among them any easier.

A couple of local outfitters are mentioned if this trip is of interest.
Big Sur Kayak Adventures offers paddling trips, as
does Cambria-based Sea for Yourself Kayak Outfitters. Trips
with these guys will run you a bit less than $100…easily worth it. 

Around Seattle

by Erik Olsen on

If you’ve lived in Seattle at all, you know that escaping from the city is ridiculously easy. The traffic around the
city can sometimes be bad, but for the most part, you can hop on I-5, or cross the bridge to the East Side or take a
ferry into the Puget Sound, and within moments, you are away from it all. There are many different places to go, all of
them promising peace, quiet and the occasional bald eagle or orca, if you’re really lucky.

This piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer
offers some suggestions for Right Coasters to consider if they’re heading to the Emerald City. From Kitsap Peninsula to
the San Juan Islands (ALWAYS a good choice as the ), there are several good
trip ideas to consider here. As one who is always eager to proselytize the Northwest, I give all the suggestions
mentioned here a thumbs up.

NYT on Kayak Fishing

by Erik Olsen on

Here’s one I missed in last week’s Escapes section of the Times. Wendy Knight
writes
about the dramatic increase in the number of people who go kayak fishing. Now, didn’t I mention this a while
back?

Anyway, it’s a good little piece about how some kayak manufacturers are turning more to the fishing crowd, and
crafing boats that allow paddling anglers (paddlanglers?) to fishNstroke. The market for fishing kayaks, says one
manufacturer, “has grown from less than 10 percent of our market to over 25 percent.”

Who knew? Well, I did. Anyway, according to the piece, the sport is now most popular in Florida and Texas, followed
by fishNstrokers in Long Island and Connecticut. Of course, the boats ain’t cheap. A fully equipped fishing kayak can
cost between $800 and $1,200…and that’s not counting flies. 

Canyon Rafting

by Erik Olsen on

In the spirit of Willy’s trip rafting the Grand Canyon, I thought I’d post this article by writer
Mark Sundeen, whose article
in Men’s Journal is all about the same
thing.

Sundeen’s book The
Making of Torowas on my reading list earlier in the year, and made me giggle like a baby. He writes equally well
when it comes to adventure travel, and this piece is worth a read.