Inflatable Kayak Blog

On our recent trip to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, we took a side trip to visit my sister-in-law in Ontonagon, about an hour away from Hubbell where we were staying. She fixed us a lunch and we had a nice visit. Her son has a cabin on the Firesteel River and he had invited us to stop by and put the kayak in while we were in the area. He had told us that it was a great place to kayak and that he thought we would enjoy the quiet and scenic area.

We drove to the cabin, got out and inflated our Sea Eagle 330, launching from a little area where some hard shell kayaks rested on the bank. It really was a great place to kayak! The river was fairly wide with pretty twists and turns and wilderness all around. We only came across a few houses all the while we were paddling. We kept waiting for a deer and fawn to be standing along the bank drinking water, but that never did happen, though I’m sure there were plenty of deer in the area, the timing wasn’t right. We paddled up river to begin our trip and went for quite some time before we headed back. When we got back to the cabin we decided to go down stream a bit, seeing it was so pretty. It was windy and being on the river in the wind was different than on a lake. Wind also affects inflatable kayaks more than folding or hard shell kayaks. At one place the wind was behind us, but as we turned a bend, the direction of the wind changed and we would be heading into the wind. Unfortunately, we didn’t feel comfortable enough yet with our new sail to take it along with us on a small river, but it might have come in handy on that part of the trip.

We did see some ducks and a few turtles sunning themselves on a log along the way. I got out the camera and took some shots as best I could in the windy conditions. We didn’t make it all the way where the river empties into Lake Superior on this trip.  Maybe if we get down that way again we can do that. When we did turn around it was difficult paddling in some areas because the wind was really blowing against us. That and the fact that we had stayed out longer than we normally do and I think we were more tired than we normally are, made the trip back to the dock seem even longer.

We usually paddle in lakes and more open water. Although we’ve been on rivers before, this was our first time on a really nice river and it makes me think we should try to search out and paddle some rivers more often.