We’ve got four months, but we’ve been building our gear list, and thinking about what we are going to have to start working on early. It’s boring stuff, and would really just like to be on the water. I don’t think we will ever be at risk of over planning, because we just want to enjoy whatever the trip becomes. But at the same time, there are some things we need to get done early.
The two big things to figure out are our meals and our route. Food is important to us. One of us, more than the other. Both of us will eat anything, but I know that we will want to eat certain tasty bits, and we’ll have to figure out just how much to carry, and how much to ship ahead to stops along the way. To figure that out, we need to get an idea of how long we are going to take for each of the legs.
We have looked at the popular kayak routes up the Inside Passage, and there are so many amazing places to go! We don’t want to create and stick to an itinerary, but we need to start figuring out a couple dates and stops so we can re-supply and meet up with friends in Ketchikan. I would like to put some maps on the wall so we can start getting our heads around the entire distance.
To get started I took a Google Earth file from Glenn Charles, a guy who kayaked the Inside Passage last year. I was able to convert his file using GPSBabel+ and open it in TopoFusion. Now we can explore his route on topographical maps and satellite images from start to finish. What a lazy way to get started! You can almost smell the beach at Blind Island State Park in the San Juan Islands.
I called Glenn, to find out what he did for maps last year, and he had some good ideas. It was nice of him to share what he learned, especially considering he leaves tomorrow morning on his Atlantic Odyssey trip, paddling from Key West, Florida to Quebec City (check out his One Ocean Project site). That will be a completely different kind of trip, and should be fun to follow on his site.
So this is probably how the next four months are going to go, planning, researching, spending money and waking up in the middle of the night wishing we were already gone!
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