Paddling, paddling, and more paddling...

I have been working at the tolls A LOT.. mostly because the weather her was so hot and humid that the 'regulars' did not want to be stuck in a toll booth atop hot pavement accompanied by heavy exhaust fumes... I can't say that it was easy to work on those days, especially on the days where I worked at a booth where I am the only person there, so there was not an opportunity for any breaks to cool down... but I am happy to have had the chance to work. Even with the extra shifts, I have been able to make time for fun....which, for me, has meant being in my kayak! This is a picture of the side of my kayak.. it says Old Town, which is the brand of kayak I own... Old Town Canoe and Kayak is a company here in Maine, and makes great products! Anyway, enough of being a commercial...

One of my missions this summer is to explore bodies of water that I have never been on. So far, this summer, I have done four new places... in addition to some of my favorite spots. I want to do more new places. It's kind of cool for me to be able to kayak on new places... for so long I associated kayaking with the river up north, where Mom and I would paddle for hours... and while that is still my favorite place to kayak, I am finding many other little places I enjoy. I need to update my Maine map... I write down places where I have kayaked and describe how to get there so I can return there easily. I am sharing a lot of pictures here and for some reason lately when I post pictures it takes a long time to coordinate the pictures with text, the formatting is off. It does not end up looking like I think it will... so I am going to try to describe a few pictures of the same area...

This first group of pictures were taken on Monday. I was able to meet up with my friend Kris, one of my friends from college. She and her daughter met up with me at a pond which ended up being close to their house for a few hours of paddling. It was a fun day. Fun to get time with Kris and her daughter, fun to see nature, as always, and fun to see Kris's daughter try her hand at paddling. She did pretty well too, maybe a future kayaker! This pond is one I have been to twice before. It is a cool place.. makes me think of what it would be like to kayak in Florida or Louisiana. It is fairly narrow and winds back and forth. The water is filled with lily pads and other plant life, so thick at times it is hard to paddle.









































These pictures were taken on a river trip on Thursday. I had been looking at my map and wanted to do a river, thinking that a river may be more similar to places I have been up north. The place where I put in was a good launch site. The water there was very cloudy... I hope it is so cloudy because the land there has a lot of silt/sand and clay not because the river is unhealthy. There were a good number of turtles sunning themselves on logs, none of which allowed themselves to be caught by me for a close up encounter with a human.. which was disappointing to me. I went on this excursion with another friend of mine. Someone who I have known for a while. It was good to get to spend some time with him. We paddled lazily up the river, which had little to no current for a couple of hours, stopping along the way to photograph turtles, try to catch turtles, and so watch a blue heron. I was very excited to see the heron because I had not seen one yet this year. This river was very cool because it twits and turns a lot and just keeps going. Along the way we encountered a couple kayaking who asked if they were heading up or down stream, wanting to head towards the ocean. (The river has a few damns, below which is the ocean.) They had been paddling for 2.5 hours and were getting tired. Someone had dropped them off and was going to pick them up at one of the damns, but the person left before telling them which way to paddle, left or right... so they were worried they were going in the wrong direction. I do not understand that... who does something like that, kayaking on a river, without having researched it a little bit. I had read things online about this river and knew that the current was slow/non existent. I knew that I needed to go left to go upstream... This couple could have been in a dangerous situation. What if that river had whitewater? (Which it does below the dams.) I like trying new places, but I think it is smart to have some knowledge about it first. I will definitely return to this spot.













































One day this week, Wednesday, I did two kayak trips. In the morning, I met up with two of my favorite co-workers, Deb and Judy, to do a little pond. As it worked out this pond is said to be the cleanest pond in the state, with the best water quality. I can see why... there is a very small access point from which people can launch their watercraft. Larger boats are not allowed. The people who have camps along the pond's edge have mostly canoes and kayaks. It was beautiful. The water was so clear. The wind came up a bit while we were paddling, but because the pond is so small, it didn't create large waves. We paddled and talked, talked and paddled... and it was great. We saw a family of loons, with only one baby. The baby, which I would assume would be about the same size as the ones I saw earlier this season, was getting pretty big. It was still fluffy, but did dive under the water for a while. We spotted the baby first without parents nearby, but as we got closer to the baby, the parents came swimming up quite quickly and were making sounds, lecturing, the baby, we assumed about getting to far away from its parents....rebellious teenagers! We saw the family again later and I was able to get close as one of the adults gave itself a bath, preening itself, it was cool to watch. After it finished it spread its wings and I was able to get a good shot! What a great morning!

























































That afternoon another friend wanted to get together, wanted to do something outside, so I offered to take her kayaking. She was excited to go as she had not been since we had gone together last summer. We went to a little stream close to her house, the place where I had seen a loon on its nest earlier this spring. I was very sad to go by the nest and see that there was an unhatched egg there. There was no sign of a loon... so I was pretty sure the nest had been abandoned. The rest of the paddle was nice. As we returned to tha launch site, we passed the loon's nest again, still no sign of an adult. I knew that by now, eggs should have hatched... but that night I emailed the Maine Audubon Society asking if it was possible that this was a second nesting or if the egg had been abandoned. I had read online that in Canada there are organizations that collect unhatched/abandoned eggs to try to determine why the eggs did not hatch. (Environmental reasons) I wanted to know if such practices were done in Maine. I was happy to hear back from the Audubon Society and was told that most likely it was an unhatched egg. I was asked to go back to the spot to see if there was an adult around, apparently if the first nesting does not result in at least one healthy chick, loons will lay another round of eggs... and if I was sure it was abandoned, I was asked to collect the egg. Maine does have research organizations to see why eggs do not hatch, but I was told that unfortunately there are many eggs in freezers because money is not there to do the research... I did not like the idea of this egg sitting in the freezer, so was happy to learn there would be another option for the egg, should it still be there and still abandoned... The Audubon Society is in the process of making "loon Kits' to be used to educate Maine kids about loons and how to preserve their nesting sites and lakes and rivers on which loons live. So I returned to the nest site on Friday afternoon after working the tolls... and was hoping to see an adult loon on the nest or to see signs that the egg had ben hatched...but it was still there, alone... I got close to the nest and there were not feathers, no signs of recent company... and I was convinced that seeing the nest a third time with no adult loon, meant that the nest had been abandoned and that this egg, for whatever reason, did not hatch... so I collected the egg... which was much bigger than I thought it would be. it is a good three and a half to four inches long and has some weight to it. While it is cool to hold an unhatched loon egg... I mean how many people get that opportunity? It was sad too... Loons are amazing birds, have been around for years, surviving longer than many species...



















There are a lot of other things still going on in my life... things about which I am very stressed... but I am happy to find time to do something I love so much. I feel very lucky to live in the state of Maine. (Remind me of this in February when I am complaining about the snow!)