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The Maskwa River. Maskwa means Bear in Cree, but for this weekend it meant Bear-ly any Water. We got away around 9:30 Friday morning under patchy cloud with a forecast of 30% chance of rain Friday, 60% rain and thunderstorms for Saturday. It did drizzle a bit on the way to the Maskwa Project, which is a camp on the river which bills itself as a Minimalist Wilderness Retreat. They have self made yurts and tent camping spaces, some other little buildings and are putting in trailer sites, so...

I've mostly paddled Wenonah boats and other race-type hulls. I paddle flatwater rivers. I'm thinking I might want to get a different feeling boat to paddle. The race type hulls might be feeling too "technical" and sterilely efficient. With their flat sections amidships and total flat wedge-shapes fore/aft. I've also often paddled (and still own): a Mad River Malecite, Old Town Explorer/Tripper(?), Seda Glider kayak, Valley Pintail kayak. None of them feel like what I'm hankering for...

The recent thread by a paddler wanting to choose between two boats got me thinking.. ( and yes dinner is burned). Does a paddler really need to evaluate a lot of variables? Or simply a few.. Perhaps, weight, length, stability, rocker, material, price. Or perhaps less? In this day it seems the customer is faced with information overload that they would not have been had to deal with forty years ago. I suspect that many of us started canoeing in whatever our parents had at hand or what we...