We visited relatives in Southern California over the weekend and stopped by Newport Beach to check out the surfing action. There were a “few” surfers on the water Saturday morning.
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Valet Diving on Little Cayman
To get away from it all you COULD travel farther from home than Little Cayman Island but you would be hard-pressed to find a more isolated vacation spot. At 10 miles long by one mile wide and with a resident population of 170, Little Cayman is tiny. It’s not only […]
Lester River Race
For the past three years I’ve wanted to be in Duluth, MN during the annual whitewater race on the Lester River. I’ve seen photos and videos of expert kayakers negotiating the class IV and V features of this challenging river, and it looked like there were good observation points for […]
Prairie Paddling: Whitewater Comes to Iowa
When it comes to having an eye on the future, three towns in Iowa have their stuff together. Charles City, Manchester and Elkader each have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars to create whitewater parks. For someone who spent his first 30 years in Iowa, this is an amazing development […]
Bald Eagles: Convocation at the top of the food chain
Last weekend as I looked out our living room window overlooking Green Bay, I saw a pair of bald eagles perched on the ice near the open water. I assumed they were hunting fish. But through binoculars I could see one of them had captured a Bufflehead duck. Bald eagles […]
Try prescription-strength Nature
A good message for bug- and snake-haters and other lovers of the indoors. Link to video Link to video 2
Indoor Kayak Training
Now that rivers are icing up in the Upper Midwest, it may finally be time to declare the end of the 2015 late-fall, early-winter whitewater paddling season. Some hardy sea kayakers will still be at it wherever they can find open water. While most kayakers wait for warmer weather, pool […]
December Beatdown on Lake Michigan
A cold, rainy day in late December but rare open water for this time of year on Lake Michigan. Fellow paddlers in the video: Dan O’Connor and Peter O’Malley.
Three Great Days of Boating in Mid-December
Editor’s note: Rob Smage is an accomplished Midwest whitewater paddler and author of many river reports on the American Whitewater website. He was also one of my mentors during my early ventures into whitewater kayaking. The following guest blog post came my way today via Tony Cantania, a fellow protégé […]
That time our dive boat sank
Whenever two or more scuba divers gather in one place, you’re likely to hear amazing tales of underwater adventure. Most of them are true, mostly. When it’s my turn to tell a dive story, mine starts like this: “Well there was that time our dive boat sank.” Before I tell […]