There Is No Such Thing as Bad Weather?

Annie has been thinking about buying some kayaks that John found on KSL.com so she could go paddling with us when we take the tandem kayak out. The only problem was that the lady that owned them lived in Mesquite, Nevada. She finally decided to go get them yesterday because she had Monday and Tuesday off. She asked me if I wanted to take the Tahoe and go with her. She had arranged to meet the lady at a lake near St. George and we could paddle and camp over night and come home the next day.

It sounded like fun and off we went, even though the weather forecast had slowly deteriorated over the weekend. But we brought our cold weather paddling gear and were looking forward to a little get a way, optimistically remembering Roark's axiom: "There is no such thing as bad weather only bad gear."

By the time we reached Salt Lake it was pouring and visibility was pretty bad, but it cleared up by Provo. But the temperature began to drop and it started to sleet as we climbed into Beaver. Sigh. By now the forecast was for rain and snow with a high wind warning in central and northern Utah for Tuesday. Annie called and suggested the lady with the kayaks meet us in St George instead of the lake not trusting our gear to be good enough for high winds and freezing temperatures. Good gear doesn't do much good if you are not smart when you use it.

The kayaks were just what Annie was looking for and she was pretty pleased as we started to load them on the Tahoe. I was a little nervous about loading them without John, but it went slick as a whistle. Until started to rain. And then all we could do was laugh. And we used our cold weather paddling gear for something: to help us stay dry and warm while we finished tying down the kayaks.