Friday night Michael suggested we head out to Marsh Creek State Park to do some kayaking over the weekend. Cool. A couple of friends with kayaks recommended the location, and after hitting the website Saturday morning to check out rental rates we packed up a few items to bring along for our day out.
We arrived at the park around noon, covered ourselves in suntan lotion and rented a 2-person kayak and headed out on the lake. I’d been kayaking before, with some friends way back in high school in the ocean (well, a bay), and this was Michael’s first time. Using a kayak when you’re not dealing with ocean currents is quite different from doing it in a lake, and I really enjoyed the calmness of lake kayaking.
We spent two hours on the lake, long enough for my arms to get quite a workout from rowing (even though Michael did most of the work). It was a lot of fun, next time we’ll probably go with separate kayaks, but the two-person one was a fun experience. Afterwards we put a blanket out on the grass under some trees and just hung out for a while and did some reading and relaxing. It’s a bit pricey to go out and do this, $50 for a 2-person kayak for 2 hours, and it would be $80 total for each of us to have a kayak for 2 hours, I guess this is why so many of our friends own their own, which is something we’ll consider if we really start getting into it. One thing we do want to go out and buy is a couple bikes to ride on local trails. We don’t want to spend a lot on bikes right now, and will probably just end up heading out to Target in a few weeks and picking up a couple $100 bikes to get us started.
Michael gave a couple friends a call to get recommendations on places to eat in the area and around 4 we took up one of their recommendations and headed to the Brickside Grille, which is owned by the same people who operate The Drafting Room, for dinner. It was a good recommendation! The shrimp we ordered as appetizers were great, brick oven pizzas we ordered were great, the beer selection was good. Unfortunately our service was lousy, our waitress didn’t write down our orders, so screwed mine up (offered to fix, but no discount on the bill, boo), she hardly ever came to check on us and I had to call her back every time she flew by to drop off food to get more beer or whatever, we never did manage to get her attention long enough to request a couple glasses of water. I’d go back though, having a Golden Monkey with my great shrimp and pizza was exactly what the day called for. Oh, and Victory is right in that area, but after our lousy food experiences the last few times we’ve been there I think we’re close to giving up on their brewpub entirely.
In all, a very good day. Unfortunately both Michael and I got some sunburn, patchy in a few places but I realized this morning that the places I was burned were the spots that got wet while we were kayaking, my right wrist and some on my left, my upper legs. The lotion is supposed to be water resistant, but we used suntan lotion from last year, I know I’d heard that you’re supposed to buy new lotion every year because it doesn’t work as well the next year, but I thought that was just a gimmick by the suntan lotion industry to sell more. It’s just that suntan lotion is so expensive and we never come close to finishing a whole bottle in a season. Sigh, I sure learned my lesson.
Today I have a bunch of errands to run and might round off the afternoon by heading down to the outdoor pool at the YMCA, new suntan lotion in hand.