If you could paddle any one place, where would it be?

Dan_Millsip said:
That would be so cool to paddle there -- you could spend a long, long time exploring.

*****
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If I could just figure out how to talk a bunch of folks into giving me their money so I could go do it. That's what I admire most about expeditioners..their fund raising prowess.
 
Tootsall said:
Oh man, did this thread ever get highjacked! :clap:

Where do I want to paddle? How about Belize?
Oh wait...I'm already booked to go there next month, (if I can get the driveway cleaned out in time!)
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Belize, was great in the 1980's before it became to commercialized. I used to recover in Belize after long bloody deployments to some god forsaken hellhole. It was a short hop from SOCOM at Ft Bragg, NC.
http://www.socom.mil/socomhome/pages/usasoc.aspx
 
@Gary Jacek:
I tried kayaking in Halong Bay. The water here is dark green and calm. Booked a cruise tour https://www.bestpricevn.com/Tour_Sealife-Cruise-2-days.html, I was transported to a beach on an island for swim and kayak. I had a wonderful kayak right around island and then through some large sandstone rocks. Visited a floating village and I was given the opportunity to kayak again. It is said that kayaking is the best way to see Halong Bay. True, I feel myself so small in the middle of the ocean, surrounded by imposing karst formations. It was one of the most fun parts, end up with some sore arms. haha
 
Belize is high on my list, as are many other places. Scotland, Finland, Croatia, Turkey all make my list.

A few years ago (in 2012) I created a blog post with my version of The List all of us paddlers have.
http://pawistik.blogspot.ca/2012/07/list.html
(Note, since writing this blog post I have checked #6 off of the list.

The List
Like practically every other paddler out there, I have a bucket list of places or routes that I really want to paddle. I figured I'd start to write some of them down here. They are in no particular order and I'll add to it over time. Some are kayaking destinations, some more suited to canoe. This list could really be much longer, but it's a start.

  1. Circumnavigate Lac La Ronge (Sask). I blogged about the idea of kayaking the approximately 290 km of Lac LaRonge last year and it's likely to remain on the "to do list" for another year or two.
  2. Clearwater River (Sask). Recently, there has been talk about mining the bitumen (tar) sands to the north of the Clearwater, a Canadian Heritage River, and we really should paddle this one while it's still pristine, and to show that there is value in pristine wilderness.
  3. Broughton Archipelago (BC). A recent post on WestCoastPaddler.com has my interest piqued to visit this area in the northern portion of Johnstone Strait, NE of Vancouver Island. (Update: Here's another report on the Broughton Archipelago that I enjoyed: http://allisonoutside.net/2012/09/the-b ... chipelago/.)
  4. Mackay Lake, Bartlett Lake (Sask). I was there a couple of years ago by snowshoe (see Mark's blog post). I'd like to go back by canoe. Not as grand as most other destinations in this list, but the chance of me getting there in the next year or so is rather a lot higher.
  5. Coulonge River (Que). My Great Great Great Grandfather was George Bryson, Sr. who was a lumber baron in the Ottawa River Valley. He logged the Coulonge and built the timber slide past the Grand Chutes.
  6. Haida Gwaii (BC). The Queen Charlotte Islands and Gwaii Hannas National Park is a place my wife and I would love to paddle.
  7. Bonnet Plume &/or Peel Rivers (Yuk). The awesome mountain rivers of northern Yukon are places I'd like to see first hand. The Bonnet Plume River is part of the Canadian Heritage River System. (I have at least seen the Yukon River in person.)
  8. Cree River (Sask). We were hours away from starting this trip when my Grandma died and we pulled out. So, it remains on the list and we are just as eager to paddle it.
  9. Belize. A fellow I know has been spending his winters teaching kayaking in Belize. Seeing his pictures has caused me to have Belize on my list as a paddling destination.
  10. Nahanni River (NWT). Another Canadian Heritage River System river. The Nahanni has been on my list for as long as I've been dreaming about paddling.
  11. Lower Sturgeon-Weir (Sask). In 2005 we paddled a section of the upper Sturgeon-Weir from the Hanson Lake Road to Amisk Lake at Denare Beach. We were on Amisk Lake a couple weeks ago (photos and report coming soon?) and visited the river where it leaves the lake in a C2 rapid that looks like a lot of fun.
  12. Lake Superior (north shore) (Ont). Bill Mason's films have tempted me to that largest of lakes for 20 years or so. Reading reports by the likes of Bryan Hansel (http://www.paddlinglight.com/) have only added to that desire.
  13. South Saskatchewan River (Sask). We've paddled sections of it close to Saskatoon (as recently as last week), but I'd like to paddle the rest of the way to The Forks. Given how close it is to home and how often I paddle it, you'd think I'd write about it more, but here is one post from a night paddle in '02, snowshoeing on the river in '09, kayaking on the river this January, and again in March. On Sunday I'll be paddling a Lake Diefenbaker section of the river (or rather, what was the river before the building of the Gardiner Dam and creation of the lake). At the end of August I should be on the river again with my kids for a few days.
  14. Newfoundland. Beautiful, scary, rugged, cold, awesome. I don't even know it well enough to say what part I most want to paddle or where to start. But the awe-inspiring coasts of Newfoundland definitely beckon. Lee's writing helps to fuel the awe.
  15. Broken Group Islands (BC). We were there in 2010 and I want to go back, explore more and get to the outer islands more.
  16. Kazan River (NWT). Another Canadian Heritage River System river. Back in the summer of 1992 I worked at a fishing camp near the headwaters of the Kazan (located on Obre Lake, we worked upriver to Snowbird Lake and downriver to Atzinging Lake). A group of European paddlers came through the fishing camp one day. I've wanted to go back to the Kazan by canoe ever since.
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The list I posted above is Canadian-centric. I've also written an international version (but not published).

  1. The Fjords of Norway. The west coast of Norway looks simply stunning and I would love the opportunity to paddle there. Perhaps we can travel to Norway under the guise of visiting my wife's Norwegian relatives.
  2. St. Kilda. These remote Scottish islands are the featured location of the stunning video Sea Kayak with Gordon Brown, An Instructional Journey Around the Spectacular Islands of St Kilda. What can I say? The subtitle doesn't lie.
  3. New Zealand. Rugged fjords, mountains, wildlife.
  4. Australia. Home of kayaking greats like Fat Paddler & Gnarlydog, the Great Barrier Reef, Tasmania and so much more. I should really break this out into 5 or more individual items on this list.
  5. Cape Horn, Chile. Way beyond my skillset, but man the southern tip of South America looks awesome with a coastal environment that's just about as rough as it gets. Those fjords and islands looks so inviting, in a harsh way.
  6. San Francisco, California. Golden Gate Bridge, my buddy Cam (nearby in Sacramento), and a hotbed for California sea kayak activity.
  7. Homer, Kenai Fjords, Kodiak, etc., Alaska. Lots of potential destinations, all of them pretty awesome.
  8. Iceland. Hmmm, maybe remote fjords are a theme here?
  9. Isle of Man. Another branch of my wife's family is Manx and it looks like this "self-governing British Crown Dependency" would be pretty cool to circumnavigate.
  10. Belize. Since this made the first version of the list, I better keep it on the international version. Jimmy's pictures still look pretty cool.
  11. Baja. A winter feeding ground for grey whales and abundant sea life. Sounds good to me.
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Gary Jacek said:
3c. Great Barrier Island, New Zealand. I've sailed there, but really envied the very few paddlers I saw.
Google Earth "Smokehouse Bay" and work your way to three islands southwest of the peninsula.
Very impressive gannet colony. Most days it is raining birds. Warm water, good fishing,
DOC camp sites in every other little sandy cove, and almost nobody there in Feb/Mar.
Twice weekly ferry to Triphena or Port Fitzroy, or you can fly in, but don't forget your boat.
Services are minimal. If you mention to Kiwis that you've been to "The Barrier", their eyes light up.
For most tourists, this is well off the beaten track.

I'll start with 3c and work my way back to 1.

Gary
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Hey Gary et al,

Come on over, we're holding the International Kayak Week at Great Barrier Island in March 2017. http://news.kask.org.nz/kaskkayakfest2017/ikw2017/

I've never been there and I'm really looking forward to it. It will be the week after our annual KASK forum, http://news.kask.org.nz/kaskkayakfest2017/faq/
and previous IKW's have been brilliant.

Cheers
John
 
Northern Norway
Scotland, Ireland and Wales
British Columbia
Antarctica

Time will tell if I can get to any of them. BC and Scotland are the most likely.
 
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