90 Second Escape: An evening paddle on Jordan Lake

Monday — never an easy time for the outdoors enthusiast. After a weekend of adventure, returning to the humdrum work-a-day world can make one melancholy. To help ease this trying transition, we’re running a new feature every Monday called 90 Second Escape. Essentially, it’s a 90-second video of a place you’d probably rather be: a trail, a park, a greenway, a lake … anywhere as long as it’s in the sun.

Today’s 90-Second Escape: Watching the sun set on another workweek from the cockpit of a kayak.

At 4:30 Friday afternoon, there was a steady rain, the same steady rain that had been falling for most of the past two days. At 4:40 the rain stopped and at 4:45 the gray sky began to lighten. At 4:46 I was putting the kayak on the car and heading west, to Jordan Lake.

For much of the summer, I’d been threatening to end a workweek with a paddle in my hands. For a variety of not-really-good-enough reasons, it still hadn’t happened. Since I couldn’t come up with a not-good-enough reason to stay home, and because at one point I actually thought I’d seen the sun poke through, I found myself unloading my little Old Town Loon 100 at the Ebenezer Church boat ramp at Jordan Lake.

Two things to like about this particular put-in from a kayaker’s perspective: One, It’s a 24-hour launch, so you can stay on the water as long as you like. Watch the sun set? Why not stick around and watch the stars come out? And two, while the vast majority of motor boats head west from here, to the main body of Jordan Lake, the savvy kayaker heads east, under the Beaver Creek Road bridge to the relative peace and quiet of two Jordan fingers that eventually dissolve into Beaver and Little Beaver creeks, both ideal for winding down a long week in the trenches.

C’mon. Let’s go for a paddle.

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