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Guest Article: Parents and teens pull together on a
six-day sea kayaking adventure
By Linda Hagen Miller
- Special to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer August 19,
2004
We've paddled our kayaks
to Little Kaikash Beach on Vancouver Island and are sitting on the rocks eating
lunch when one of the guides shouts: "Whales!" A group of orcas appears in the
distance, then another and another, rolling, splashing, black and white, the
big dorsal fin of the males knifing the waters of Johnstone Strait.
We jump into our kayaks
and paddle out, bunching together as our guides have instructed. The whales are
surfacing and blowing across the strait, gliding between fishing boats, when
one group veers toward our cove. They're really coming this way ... they're
within 100 yards ... they're so close we can hear them blow.
I feel an intense surge
of adrenaline. These are such beautiful animals. Suddenly a big male cuts
toward us, a creature bigger than our boats. Out of nowhere a purse seine boat
barrels between our kayaks and the orca, chasing him away. It's breathtaking,
maddening, fulfilling. The teenagers in our group have lost all trace of blase
cool and the parents are full of juvenile reactions -- everyone's whooping and
high-fiving and oh-wowing at the display.
This is why we came on a
guided, six-day family kayaking trip with Sea Kayaking Adventures in the strait
between mainland British Columbia and Vancouver Island, a place known for
orcas. The geography here is a bit like the San Juan Islands on steroids. The
mountains on Vancouver Island look massive enough to sink it, and across the
channel, mainland B.C.'s snow-dusted peaks hunker in the distance. The water is
lapis lazuli blue and the clear sky is competing for attention.
But, unlike the San
Juans in the summer, the beaches often are empty, the tourist-toting ferries
are preempted by fishing boats, luxury hotels and inns are scarce, and fishing
lodges are plentiful.
This Canadian passage is
an orca freeway to the Robson Bight/Michael Biggs Provincial Ecological
Preserve, a favorite summer destination for the black-and-white whales that
like to rub their bellies on the rocks in the bight's shallows. Hundreds of the
"Free Willy" look-alikes make their way through this strait, feeding on salmon
and playing along the way.
The night before the
adventure began, we met our guides and paddling companions in Port McNeill.
Leading us were Sarah Hauser, Eric Reid and Paul LaPerriere, all in their late
20s with years of outdoor and kayaking experience. Their clients include three
families and a solo woman. Lucinda Olson, her 21-year-old daughter, Camille,
and 17-year-old son, Reid, are from Sedona, Ariz. The Kaplans, parents Ann and
Larry, Carl, 14, and Alex, 15, are from Los Angeles. Our photographer, Ilona
(who goes by one name), lives in Idaho. My husband, Bob, our 16-year-old
daughter, Leah, and I live in Spokane.
No one has sea kayaking
experience, everyone has camped or backpacked, most have been whitewater
rafting. Adults and kids are in good physical shape. There wasn't a wimp among
us. The adults have one thing in common: teenagers, which is one of the reasons
we chose a guided adventure vacation. Family trips are harder to organize as
take-me-anywhere children grow into teens. They have a point-and-click
attention span and general intolerance of adults, especially parents. Not to
say any of our kids are like that, but each has been known to slip-slide in and
out of adolescent moods and attitudes.
We are also three
families who strongly favor independent travel, and it wasn't easy for the
alpha males and females to give up the leadership role. Once under way,
however, we realized that as inexperienced paddlers unfamiliar with the
terrain, weather and tides, we couldn't possibly have executed this trip on our
own.
©Safety and
paddling issues aside, who would have organized, packed and cooked all the
food? A Dutch oven, propane stove and three chefs/guides effortlessly produced
hot breakfasts, plentiful lunches and one surprising dinner after another --
fresh salmon (donated by a passing fisherman), chili rellenos casserole,
pineapple upside-down cake, brownies and more. Eric called it "float and
bloat." By the end of the trip, Lucinda thinks Sarah, Eric and Paul could be
professional party planners.
Family dynamics kicked
in on the first day. We met the guides at our put-in, Telegraph Cove, picked a
boat from the fleet of jelly-bean-colored Seward doubles. The 21-foot-long,
30-inch-wide kayaks carried enough food and fresh water for 14 people
(including three teenage boys, remember), tents and sleeping bags, an entire
camp kitchen, three small dry bags per person and a portable potty.
It took over an hour to
load the mountain of gear into the six double and two single kayaks. The
laborious process was peppered with a few PG-13 words and parents admonishing
their kids to "pitch in, don't just stand there." We donned our new wardrobes:
yellow, red or blue personal flotation devices, goofy-looking neoprene boots
and even goofier-looking spray skirts (attached over the cockpit to keep us
dry).
"Ha-ha, you're wearing a
skirt!" Carl Kaplan taunted his older brother. "Well, so are you!" Alex
replied. "Yeah, but ..." This back-and-forth banter was the infinitely comical
background of the entire trip.
Paddling out of
picturesque Telegraph Cove past a whale-watching boat loaded with tourists, we
felt pretty smug that we were orca-hunting under our own power, just a foot
above sea level. The unearned cockiness dissipated when we hit the strong wind
and foot-high chop in Johnstone Strait.
The guides kept us in a
fairly tight group, there was always a spotter in the rear, and everyone
paddled hard. Carl and Alex maintained the lead, steaming ahead like outrigger
canoe racers. Their parents stroked in unison, long, lean bodies belying the
fact that they spend most of their time as a schoolteacher and an executive.
They were the only couple who didn't switch partners, and we nicknamed their
kayak the Love Boat.
Our first sighting
wasn't whales, though. "Porpoises!" one of the guides shouted. They swam by in
unison, their dorsal fins gliding through the chop. "See the white patch on
their fins -- those are Dall's porpoises," Eric shouted. Tidbits of information
like this came from all the guides as we poked through tide pools, hiked in the
woods or watched for whales. The gee-whiz tone worked well with teenagers whose
brains were on summer vacation.
Paddling, eating and
camping together are instant icebreakers, but the guides helped by instigating
summer-camp games whenever there was a lull. Eric organized beach baseball and
bocce ball, Paul taught us Ichi-Mini-Hoi, a rather hilarious game that involved
walking like a penguin, and Sarah suggested Two Truths and a Lie.
"OK, you have to guess
which of these statements is a lie," she said. "I was once on the cover of a
magazine. I broke my collarbone when I was a kid. My brother and I stuffed our
little brother in the clothes dryer." All were totally plausible. We quizzed
her on each one and were pretty evenly split on our guesses. (It was the
dryer.) The adults played, too. Or we found a log in a sunny spot where we
could read, or a patch of sand where we could nap.
Toward the end of the
week, the guides taught us the magic of seaweed. In Seaweed 101, we learned its
medicinal and edible qualities, but little did we know you could make music
with it. Chop off the end of the long, tube-shaped bull kelp, put your lips on
the slimy opening and blow. Once again, adults and teens blundered hilariously
onto common ground.
The orcas put on a final
show the day we crossed Johnstone Strait to Hanson Island. We were lazing
around, letting lunch settle before a hike, when someone saw them. It was a
veritable orca freeway. The massive bulls, which can weight up to 10 tons,
saluted with 5-foot-high dorsal fins. The calves surfaced as if glued to their
mothers' sides, and the juveniles spy-hopped and waved their tails -- at us,
I'm sure.
The last night the
parents compared this physically demanding vacation with previous family
holidays that had included long plane rides, foreign countries, first-class
hotels, history, culture and total independence.
"Being outdoors 24 hours
a day is a lot different than a car or plane trip," Larry offered. "A lot of
stuff gets flushed out, gets out of the way."
"The large group worked
really well," Ann added. "The guides have great skills; they know when to hold
back, when to play games."
"We live in a small town
and I want my kids to see more of life's possibilities," Lucinda said. "This
trip probably opened them to questions they would not have asked."
"Leah needs to find out
what she's capable of," Bob said of our daughter, who is tentative in all
things involving large animals, speed and big water. "Exposing her to a new and
fairly demanding environment does that."
By week's end, Larry and
Ann had seen their rambunctious sons stilled at the sight of purple starfish
and sea urchins.
Lucinda proudly watched
Camille help carry the 150-pound kayaks across slippery rocks and hold her own
paddling in choppy surf. She recognized a new maturity in Reid, who hung out
with the guides and seemed to feel the convergence of his lifelong Eagle Scout
skills and this adventurous lifestyle.
Bob and I realized that
Leah is physically stronger than she or we ever imagined. Braver, too. For the
teens: the whales were awesome, meeting new people was fun, trying and
succeeding at kayaking made them proud of themselves, getting away from home
and having fun with their parents was "cool."
A life-changing
experience? No one was ready to go that far, but it was clear that sea
kayaking, camping, whale-watching, family time and working as a team with
strangers added valuable experiences to all our lives.
As if to illustrate the
point, Reid hauled his sleeping bag to the bluff, distancing himself from the
campsite. On our last morning, I overheard him say he wanted to sleep in the
open and stay awake to see all the stars come out.
After nearly a week of
paddling, it's a struggle for any of us, kids included, to keep our eyes open
past 9 o'clock, but Reid managed. And I'll bet he saw a shooting
star.
Click here for Johnstone Strait trip
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