On April 7th, 2019, the first kayakers of 2019 set foot on the Marker Wadden islands. The islands are nestled in the northeast corner of Markermeer, a large manmade lake east of Amsterdam. 

Today we have a guest post by friend and fellow Never Dry member, Nathalie! She writes about a beginner day trip on the Rotte River that I (Nena) organized for new members of the club. Edited and commented by Nena, with comment in brackets [].

Today I went on my first official kayak tour with Never Dry!! Destination: Café Oud Verlaat along the Rotte River. [Nathalie and I were joined by Marieke, Francisco, Berend, Kim, Anais, Anton, and Iede, a very energetic, happy, and enthusiastic group!]

The day began with a lot of rain and even some thunder, which made me unsure of whether we would make it to our destination (easily). I rode my bike to the club, arriving damp but excited to paddle and ready to prepare for the trip.

This weekend was abnormally warm for October. Actually, record-breakingly warm. A few of us decided to spend it on the water! Tom, Berend, and I spent Sunday exploring a new (to me) part of Haringvliet, a former estuary-turned-lake just south of Rotterdam. 

In this whirlwind of a weekend, we camped and kayaked in Friesland, crossed the Wadden Sea to Ameland, camped and biked,  paddled back again, and made it back to Rotterdam in time for dinner. We encountered a bit of wind and waves, some friendly currents, big ferries,  and a (real!) message in a bottle. 

Linschoten is a small village (~3500 inhabitants) in the Netherlands, between Gouda and Utrecht. Juliette, a fellow kayaking club member, recently moved there, and planned a trip for all of us to explore the area by kayak. This day trip took us from the town of Linschoten through some canals to Montfoort. From there, we rode the Hollandse Ijssel River to the old town of Oudewater, turning right onto the Lange Linschoten River. This lead us back to the starting point, but not before stopping at a "tea garden" along the way!

Last weekend a fun group of Never Dry paddlers headed out to Stellendam for a late winter (early spring?) paddle on the North Sea. If you are wondering why we are walking in the photo, read on to find out!

I'm on vacation this week! visiting family and friends in Boston and New York. Flights to the US always seem to be on sale this time of year, and when I saw a flight to Boston for $400, I went for it! As you might have noticed, I've been blogging pretty actively through the winter. I'm not sure where this winter-y motivation is coming from, but a few cold weather adventures and a trip to New Zealand certainly didn't hurt! 

With the Trip Planning 101 series almost wrapped up, I'm excited to kick off a new series in which I'll share photos and maps from trips that never made it onto the blog. I'll be focusing on particularly scenic/memorable trips from before The Naked Kayaker began (2010) and from more recent too-busy-to-blog periods. I think this idea stems from my wintery bouts of paddling nostalgia, and not wanting to lose the details I still remember. The posts will drift from the usual format (story, logistics, photos, map); they'll be shorter, informal, and focus on photos, with short snippets of text. Maybe I'll even ask a few of my fellow paddlers to weigh in with their memories! I'm tentatively calling it "Time Capsules," but if you have any wittier suggestions, please share them!

Today I'm excited to finally share some photos from a beautiful trip to Vancouver in October 2016...

Our last kayaking trip in New Zealand had a rocky start. We nearly forgot our tent, the weather forecast predicted two days of rain, our first boat started sinking, and on the morning of our departure I woke up with a bunch of red bites on my stomach. Five minutes of googling over breakfast at the campground, I was convinced I had bed bugs. How I could have acquired bedbugs 3-weeks into a 3-week camping trip (with my own sleeping bag in my own tent) did not seem relevant. Read on to hear more about kayaking in Fiordland National Park! Spoiler alert: I did not have bed bugs.  

Back in May (how did that happen?) I went on one of my favorite Dutch paddling trips so far: the Maas River in my new city of Rotterdam, with Iede, Marianne, Erik, and Adrian. The great thing about it is that you can get there from the club if you're willing to go through a small lock and carry your boat across a giant intersection in downtown Rotterdam... :D

My alarm went off at 7am on Sunday. At any other time of year, getting up would have been a challenge. Thanks to the long days that the Dutch latitude (52 degrees) bestows us, it was palatable. In what's becoming a weekend routine, I strapped my lunch and dry clothes on the back of my bike and swung a sizable duffle bag of kayak gear over my shoulder. It always takes a bit of extra effort to get the bike moving when it's loaded down this way. But thanks to the lack of topographic variability, the 12 minute bike ride to the kayak club is easy once you're rolling. Some aspects of Dutch life just need reframing to see the bright side.