Adventures in Paddling the Pacific Northwest

Pam in her Illusion and me in my Mariner II paddled a few miles on Moses Lake to put the cap on a weekend that included cross-country skiing with my family at the Nordic Center at White Pass just west of Yakima in Washington State.

Global warming has lengthened the paddling season on Moses Lake. Normally we’d be ice skating this time of year. Instead, I get one or two last paddles when the sun is out and the air temp rises.

The Lewis River, along with all the rivers that flow into the Columbia west of Portland, Oregon, was the freeway used by Native Americans to advance their civilization before the white man. By about 1880 that civilization had virtually disappeared. Today you can see little evidence that 50,000 people lived within 15 or 20 miles of the Lewis River.

Maybe it’s easy living on the lake after all.

Kayaking and camping the Eagle Pass area at Steamboat Rock on Banks Lake near the city of Grand Coulee in north central Washington State

Four days in Washington State’s San Juan Islands using a mothership to facilitate paddling a kayak around the many waterways and anchorages.

Many people assume that the entire state of Washington is “evergreen” but in reality the central portion – between about Ellensburg to the west and Cheney to the east – is a true desert with sagebrush, some cactus, coyotes and lots of sunshine. This dryland band extends from north of the Canadian border down through [...]