Trip Report - Kayaking (?!) the Raquette River

So, I was looking for something original to do on Saturday, and I made plans with an old friend to have a kayaking adventure. It turned out to be pretty fun. Here's the route we took.

We stashed a couple of mountain bikes at the takeout, and geared up outside the car (as always, click on the pictures for a photographic explosion):

It was a short drag to Axton Landing:

Matt, Kayaking JONG:

After putting in, though, everything was awesome.  Totally peaceful, totally calm, and a "lazy river" pace to the water made paddling super easy.  Here's some more pics:

Really cool reflections on the water:

We stopped a couple of times at the various campsites along the route for trail mix, water, and candy.  If we had planned better, we would have brought a cooler of Guinness for St. Patrick's Day.

It's still a little early in the year for this, and we ran across a few icebergs.

Ice was also covering the stagnant water outside of the main channel:

It was still gorgeous, though:

After the paddle (which took a little under 3 hours), we stashed the kayaks behind some docking material:

Then we picked up the bikes we had stashed in the woods:

The plan was Old Wawbeek Road back to the car so we could avoid riding on the main road as much as possible.  Unfortunately, it was a little too early for that too:

Eventually we made it back to the car, packed everything up, and cruised on home, ready to celebrate the holiday with a night out in Lake Placid.  Like I said, it was pretty fun.