Scare After Serenity

Saturday, June 21

On this beautiful day, we loaded up the kayaks and headed to Potlatch StatePark just in time for the incoming high tide.  The park was packed for some kind of fund raiser called Paddling for Life.  There were also two other kayakers who were planning the same outing as we were.  All went well as we headed out to the estuary, stopping for a serene lunch on one of the channel islands, as seen in the picture above.   

After our lunch, we paddled further into the channels, including a long dead end, but eventually, we found a main channel and went up the Skokomish river, which was quite beautiful and easy, too.

We turned around just about the time the tide turned, expecting an easy trip back with the tide, but no, the wind kicked up and it was ferociously difficult to get back, maybe two nautical miles across open water with big peaks and troughs of whitecaps the whole way.  Ironically, we felt like we were Paddling for Life, fully focused on the waves, so as not to capsize, and paddling as hard as we could to get back to the park.  

We don't have any pictures of the waves because we were too scared to stop and get the camera out.   The other kayakers on the same trip as us had come back well before the wind kicked up. Lucky them.  For us, it was quite an adrenaline charged adventure.