I am taking a little time-out from my mission trip journals to share another Deb-and-Jess Summer Adventure. My mom and I spent this weekend in Langlade Co, Wisconsin at the Bear Paw Resort to take a 3-day course on whitewater kayaking. Of course, whitewater kayaking sounds like it would be incredibly fun. So I was very excited about this trip.
Except for this tiny bad habit I have. Which is not trying anything that I don’t think I will be good at. Now I don’t necessarily have to be the best at everything, but I don’t like to do things that don’t come naturally to me. There’s quite a long list of these things…skiing, ice-skating, basketball, rollerblading, to name a few. Learning to ski (but not really) last winter was a humiliating experience. So as much as I was looking forward to this trip, I was really hoping that I wouldn’t have to add whitewater kayaking to the list of activities just not meant for me.
And luckily I didn’t. We had some excellent instructors. If you ever have a desire to become an expert whitewater kayaker, the 10-hour drive to Bear Paw is worth it. Not that I am writing a testimonial here or anything, but really, the location is beautiful, the staff is friendly and hardworking, and the food is awesome.
As per usual on great outdoor adventures with my mother, we had quite a few interesting experiences over the course of 5 days. First, of course, was the ‘getting there’ part. My family has this fascination with barns, and it’s Wisconsin, so there are like, thousands of them, and it was hard not to stop at every one. We made several picture-worthy detours, purchased some raspberries from a roadside stand (which were devoured in less than 3 minutes), and strolled through the town of Wittenberg, known for its murals. There were a total of 10, and we captured them all. And we almost stopped at a rabbitry, just to see if that was really a rabbit farm. The phrase was new to us. I mean, honestly, I didn’t know what else it could be, but would “Rabbit Farm” not suffice? These must have been first-class rabbits. Of high pedigree. They probably lived in their own little cabins with rabbit-sized beds and tables and chairs and at cooked carrots three times a day. Or something like that.
When we got to the Bear Paw, we checked in and headed to our cabin. I am by no means a camping snob, and can tent-camp with the rest of ‘em, but I guess I just wasn’t expecting our little cabin to be so…..well, little. As we were driving past the other cabins, I was like, “Uh, Mom, I think those cabins are bigger than ours.” And my mom, the eternal optimist, replied, “No. I’m pretty sure ours is the same size.” I didn’t believe her. Especially considering that the other cabins had names like Griz, Black Bear, Brown Bear, Polar Bear, Panda, and we were in the….Teddy Bear. The cabins were all apparently named relative to the size of said bear species. However, when we found out our cabin was one of the 3 objects on site to survive an F4 tornado in 2007, I was very impressed.
Supposedly there weren’t many bears in our area. But with the names of the cabins and the other businesses around us, I wasn’t convinced. Sugar Bear, Bear Claw Lake, The Bear Den, Cub’s Pub, Grizzly Grill, and Bear Paw itself? Kind of misleading, in my opinion. :) We made it through the whole weekend without a single bear sighting, although I may have set off a few false alarms. haha
Then there came the actual kayaking adventures. We spent part of day one on a lake. The first thing we learned to do? Flip over in our kayaks, remove a nylon skirt holding us in, and push the kayak away from us….all while underwater. Luckily I love water, so that wasn’t the scary part. It wasn’t even difficult, actually. Then we learned how to flip over, bang on the bottom of our kayaks to get someone’s attention, and then wait for another kayak to ram into us so we could grab the top of their kayak and right ourselves. Depending on who your rescuer was, this could be scary, I guess. :) After that we practiced a million different kinds of strokes to use while on the river. While all of the strokes were relatively easy, I just had a hard time paddling in a straight line. lol
Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise…whitewater kayaking, unlike the recreational lake variety, takes skill and strength. You have to use a lot of muscles that we don’t usually use, and a lot of our natural instincts will actually result in us endangering ourselves. Like leaning away from a boulder when you crash into it will most likely result in you flipping over, hitting your head on the stupid rock, and then being forced to exit the kayak and swim the rest of the rapid. While I never got to experience that part, my poor mother did. Three times, in fact. So just ask her how fun it is. :) I don’t know what was worse for her….the fact that she ended up with some pretty nasty bruises, or the fact that I didn’t flip at all. Haha I actually felt bad for her, but wasn’t too upset about missing out on that part. Although I was told that if I continued this hobby, it would happen sooner rather than later.
After lunch we headed to the Wolf River and I was feeling pretty confident. We were just doing Class 1 and 2 rapids, so nothing too dangerous, mainly practicing our strokes and learning to read the river. I was actually a little scared at first. I could handle flipping in the lake, but the thought of flipping over in rapidly moving water filled with huge boulders was not really appealing to me. My technique was a little rough, but I learned over the next few days that luckily, my natural instincts were unlike everyone else’s, which kept me from turning over in many situations. Because let me tell you what, I was a pro at hitting rocks and getting stuck on them. And each time it happened in a rapid, I would sort of let out this little “oomph” and brace myself for the water that never came. The second day, we ran a different, more difficult part of the river, close to a Class 3 rapid, and since I was much more comfortable in the kayak, I thought it was awesome. Our instructor even let us run it twice, even though the 2nd time Mom fell out on the worst part of the rapid. I missed the whole thing, but she did chase after her kayak and paddle and dragged them to shore. Definite cool points for that! :)
The most frustrating part of the weekend was learning how to roll. It was hard enough for our instructor to demonstrate and explain with hand gestures, so I’m not even going to try to explain it in writing. Basically it involved a series of what I thought were complicated and unnatural movements that you did underwater, with your paddle, to get yourself back to the surface after tipping over. We worked on it for about four hours, but it was incredibly difficult. I found out halfway through that I had somehow missed a vital part of the instruction and was kind of blazing my own trail. So although I may have rolled once sort of by myself, most times I just ended up hanging out upside down with my paddle stuck in the mud. Ironically enough, the move I thought I had invented ended up being very similar to another rolling technique, which our instructor then tried to teach me. He said it suited me better because I had a more fluid, controlled movement, whatever that means. So of course I was like, “Is that a good thing? Or just code for ‘you suck and should give up’? He promised that it was a good thing. haha Unfortunately, this was at the end of our lesson, so I didn’t really get the chance to practice it much. I think Mom and I felt a little better when both of our instructors told us it had taken them almost a year to be able to roll 70% of the time.
All in all, it was a great experience. I thought we didn’t do that bad for novices, and our instructors assured us that they’d had students much worse than us. lol My mother and I are already scouting more rivers to check out now that we passed all of our classes. Although we had a great time, I am glad to be home. Again. NO MORE VACATIONS FOR ME! I am not packing another bag until it’s time to go back to school.
from Jess, with love
always
