Today I went Kayaking on Lake Wylie in North Carolina.  It sits in between Charlotte and Belmont (Belmont's kind of on a penninsula in between two rivers, one of which is also called Lake Wylie, a big long damned up affair).

I've been reading The BenSpark Photo blog off and on over the last few months and finally had a chance to try the cayaking thing out for myself.

I don't know a whole lot about kayaking, but I have pushed canoe around a few times.  In fact I didn't even host Bill kayak until I just ran this through spellcheck!

So here are some of the things I used to get ready for my trip, I planned on going couple miles upstream are upriver.

Specifically, I hadone kayak, one paddle, a life vest,Coke zero,my digital camera that was in an otter box and that was it.

Not sure if you can tell that I was missing one very important piece of equipment, a cozy for my soda!

That's an experience for you, anyway I set out and I headed out of the Covewhere we have a boat dock.It's about a half-mile to get out of the Cove.As I was leaving the code I turned left and headed up the river.  The entire way out of the Cove and up the river I felt like I was going upstream, and there was.  I knew my technique was lower rustyor nonexistent butI thought it would get easieras it went along.It wasn't hard, it just didn't feel terribly efficient.I'm an efficiency nut and sothat annoyed me a little bit, but eventually I forgot about it just focused on the surroundings and the exercise.

I stopped after about a mile half and took a few pictures just of the panoramic view.

It was a little tricky taking the pictures because I have my camera still behind my back side to reach back behind me with both hands and keep the kayak balanced the same time.  It worked but I wouldn't say that it was comfortable.

What about another mile upstreamI stopped by a bank to grab couple pictures of this flower look up my attention.

Then I headed back upstreamand Iexperimental but with my positioning in technique and attempted to see how fast I could go.I did that for about another mile until I got a littlehot from the exertion, it was around one o'clock in the afternoon so the sun was out and I was kind cooking were in the life vest and all.My plan was to go as far of stream as I could before my arms got tired for that isn't until my arms did get tired.  But I forced myself to turn around and coast back down the river.  I figured I'd have the car going with you and be nice and easy at them back.

Again the human experience of using a kayak leapt out at me, because my turnaround space and into the windit was just as our going back as it had been going out, which is to say it wasn't too hard but that only was an easy.  I did make an improvement in my technique when i realized that I had mypaddles upside down, so I switch that and it helped just a little bit.

I kind of have this thing for driftwood, and some driftwood sticking up out of the river caught my attention so it's a couple more pictures.  This was a little tricky because I kept being pushed one way or the other by the current in the windand so I kept having to take the pictures as I posted by it either forwards or backwards.

Here are a couple more shots from a different angle.

After that I turned around and headed back,on my way back in the code I rescued a couple floaty said it got lost in the wind and dropped them ontheir respective docs.

I got back to our dock and pulled all the equipment back onto the dock and then jumped in for a quick swim selected cool down.

Kayaking Lessons Learned

• I enjoy kayaking
• It's pretty good exercise
• Technique helps, but not that much
• Take a Coke Cozy
• Get a better place to put my camera
• Try and sit still when you are taking a picture
• Take a voice recorder next time so that I can record my thoughts.