As a kid, my father took the family on an overnight canoe trip on the rockcastle river in ky. I was too small to portage the canoe but got to help carry the paddles. Looking back on it, my father was pretty clueless especially when it came to the whitewater…He used the “shotgun rapids” approach of paddling faster. It resembled the Old Milwaukee commercial. We rented the canoes from Jim Stamm of Rockcastle Adventures but we used our own family wall tent and coleman cookstove. Somehow we survived but barely. It was a one and done for my mother.
Many scout trips followed (some on the rockcastle) and all were more successful than that initial trip.
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The only canoe trip I remember with my Dad was in Virginia when my son was 5. A gentle paddle with a couple of small rapids.
We stopped and I scouted a 2’ drop and decided it was nothing.
My Dad was the bow paddler and as soon as the bow was in open air he decided to back paddle. He was a pro in power boats, not a paddler.
We wound up in a shallow pool below the drop . The canoe was full and my son was up to his shoulders . He was sitting on the hull and holding the center thwart per my instructions.
Maybe that’s why he prefers off road peddling to paddling , 40 years later.
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I’m a late bloomer when it comes to camping. I got serious about paddling in 2005, but my kids were small, so it was only day trips. I got lots of invitations from some buddies who were paddling the NFCT, but it wasn’t until 2012 that I final joined in - Long Lake to Saranac Village in the Adirondacks. great trip - still one of my favorites.
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I was a late bloomer as far as kayak camping goes. Maybe my failure to thrive as a Boy Scout had something to do with it. At any rate I went on my first kayak camping trip in 2005. An 11 day outing on the Central Coast of British Columbia.
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Boundary Waters as a young teenager on a family trip in 1969. Mostly what I remember from that 10-day trip is complete exhaustion, along with lots of black fly bites. I’d still like to go back there sometime though. Did plenty of camping before and after that, but didn’t start canoe camping as an adult until around 1984 in Louisiana.