Kayaking around Mission Bay


We love to get outdoors when we can. Living in San Diego provides a LOT of opportunities to do so. San Diego is nicknamed America's Finest City and with great weather, plenty of attractions and an enviable ocean-side location it’s hard to disagree. But forget the zoo and the themes parks, the US' eighth-largest city offers some less conventional opportunities for appreciating its fineness by ditching terra firma and taking to the skies and the water. On this day we did so at Mission Bay.

 
The main reason for our aquatic adventure this day was to put our new inflatable, 2 person kayak through its paces. We have owned another, larger, heavier 2 person kayak, but the thing is a beast. It is an inexpensive sit-on-top that moves like a barge and weighs close to one. But the main reason the inflatable was attractive was the transportation of the kayaks by car. Let me explain ...



My favorite kayak is an orange, plastic, single sit-in kayak. BUT the dilemma we ran into was that we couldn't carry both the blue, 2 person behemoth and the single orange kayak at the same time on our car (a Subaru Forester). What this meant was that 2 of us would go out on the 2 person tugboat while 1 of us stayed on shore. Enter the inflatable tandem!


Sandy in my favorite orange, single sit-in kayak


When we saw the price drop, on Amazon, for the inflatable to under $100, we bought it and we're glad that we did! Although the inflatable will never be a speed demon, it gets the job done. We can put the orange single up top on the roof rack and the inflatable collapses to fit in our Forester's cargo area. 

Although it takes a little extra time to inflate and prepare the tandem for paddling, it's worth it. All 3 of us can go out on the water at once and enjoy the waters that Mission Bay has to offer. 



We explored several parts of Mission Bay including an Island that hides a Geocache. See Sean finding it above. We didn't stay out for long, but went through the motions to prove that our processes (loading at home, unloading at the bay, assembling and disassembling) is reasonable. It is, and we'll be doing more kayaking as the weather warms up in America's Finest City.

 

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