And now for something a little different: boating! It was WAY too hot and humid today to do any hiking, but luckily for us, Chain O' Lakes State Park was the next one on our agenda, and a day on the water was just the thing. I should tell you at the outset that neither one of us has done any sort of boating in a very long time (like, since we were kids), so we weren't sure how this particular adventure would go. Some of us (ahem) were more skeptical than others.
When we got there, I asked the rangers at the rental area what would be the best type of craft for us, and they said rowboats, so I rented two of them, then waited for Mike and the boys (who were parking the car) while holding all the things.
So once we got settled into the boats and set off, we realized something: Rowing a boat is hard! Not just physically hard, though we were all tired after a couple of hours on the water, but hard in terms of steering/tacking/whatever you call it ... you know, maintaining a steady direction to get yourself where you want to go. It got a lot easier with some practice, but you may be surprised to learn that I am better at it than Mike is. The hardest part was not facing the direction I was going in, which meant depending on Liam to navigate for me (if you have ever asked an 11-year-old to navigate for you like this, I feel your pain).
Once we crossed Sand Lake, we found a hell of a reward: a great blue heron near the edge of the lake, EATING A TURTLE (turtle not shown, but it totally happened). I may have mentioned that my hands were both full of oars? Well, Liam gets the photo credits here. I am very fond of the picture where the bird is taking off.
And shortly after we entered the first channel, we found these turtles sunning themselves. Of course, to get close enough to take a picture of them, I had to go into the heavily seaweeded area. You can imagine how that turned out. I left my good camera with the zoom lens at home (curses!) for fear of getting it wet, and I ended up being very sad because this trip had the best wildlife sightings since the sunrise eagle watch way back at the beginning of our quest. Oh well.
Dear readers, if you know me at all, you won't be surprised to learn that once we got to some smaller channels, Mike and I had a difference of opinion re: whether a rowboat would actually work as a viable means of transportation. I thought yes, SURE!, but Mike thought no way. So we diverged. Max and Liam came with me, while Mike and Henry stuck with the bigger bodies of water. And I'll admit, it was a tight fit. More than a few times, my navigators would wait until the very last minute to call out, "Left! I said go LEFT, Mom!!!" just as we ran into yet another thicket of plants/seaweed/tree stumps/other obstacles. It was a little frustrating, I'll admit, and the rowboat was less ideal than a canoe or kayak would have been. In fact, yeah, ours was the only rowboat out there. But we made it a long way, and would have gone all the way to the next lake, except that the boys outvoted me, so we headed back in.
But we didn't finish without one more moment of maternal triumph. On the way back in, Liam and Max decided they wanted to try their hands at rowing because they were sure they could do a better job than I could. Liam, in particular, had been getting less and less subtle about making that point as the day wore on. So we did some maneuvering, and each of them got to take a turn at the oars. And as probably everyone in the world except for Liam and Max could have predicted, that didn't last very long, and I was left to row us back in by myself. Mike and Henry were waiting for us at the dock, and Mike and I enjoyed a moment of parental solidarity over the whole thing.
Verdict: SUCCESS! I really liked being out on the water, though I think next time I would like to try using a canoe or even a kayak, both of which allow you to see where you're going along the way. I know that a lot of other parks, including our beloved Potato Creek, offer rentals, but I would also really like to come back to Chain o' Lakes sometime in the early fall and try it again. Stay tuned!
See also: SPP1, SPP2, SPP3, SPP4, SPP5, SPP6, SPP7, SPP8, SPP9, SPP10.
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