Nearly ten years ago, in the early days of our relationship, John introduced me to the fun sport of canoeing.  John's parents had owned a fifteen-foot red canoe that we were welcome to borrow whenever we wanted, and we did so on a couple of occasions.  In July 1998, we took the canoe for the first time out on Blue Ridge Reservoir and had a wonderful time...despite the fact that we had forgotten to bring the sunscreen with us!  (That was when we learned Lesson #2: Sunscreen!) 

It had been almost eight years since we had last taken a canoeing trip; in February 2000, while I was pregnant with Mary, we took the canoe to Alamo Lake and did a short excursion to the dam and back.  Since then, we had been meaning to get back out onto the water again...but unfortunately, it turned out to be a longer wait than we had hoped.

Two years ago, Bill and Erika's canoe was lost when their neighbor's house caught fire.  The flames were so hot that they melted the canoe, which had been sitting on top of the brick wall between their properties.  They never replaced it.

Although their canoe was gone, it was not forgotten.  John and I often talked about buying our own canoe so that we could get back into the sport again; but every time we priced them - and saw how expensive they were - we would just say, "Well, maybe next year..."

As it turned out, 2007 would finally be the year that we would get that canoe.

John started researching canoes around the end of November, in hopes of finding one that was affordable.  He wanted a canoe as much as I did, but he didn't want to break the bank buying it.  He finally found one on Target.com, so he ordered it. 

Of course, John had no clue what he was going to do with that canoe once it arrived.  It was going to be shipped directly to the house, but he didn't know when or how.  Now, John has always prided himself on his incredible Christmas surprises, so he hoped that he could intercept the canoe before Mary and I could see it, in order to make this one of his finest surprises.

Unfortunately, this would be the one year that he would not succeed in giving me that huge surprise; that was because the canoe was shipped on December 7...and Mary and I got home from work first that day!

When I saw the gigantic green thing sitting in the carport, all I could say was, "I don't think I'm supposed to be seeing that."  With that, I did my best to usher Mary into the house before she could see it.  Naturally, if Mary was still three years old, that would have worked beautifully...but it's very hard to fool a seven year old! 

"Mommy, what's that?" she asked, trying to go take a look at it.

"Nothing, Mary; just get in the house!"

Once I managed to get her into the house, I did everything I could to take her mind off of the canoe laying in the driveway, and for the next ten minutes, she was quiet, like nothing had happened.  Then, John returned home from work...and the first thing Mary said to him as he walked in the door was, "Daddy!  Did you know there's a boat in the driveway?"

"No way, really?" John exclaimed.  "I didn't see a boat!"  He was lying; you could tell.  He had that smirk on his face and a slight laugh in his tone, so I shot him a knowing look and played along.

"What do you mean, there's a boat out in the driveway?" I asked.  "I didn't see anything out there."

This went on for several minutes while John got settled and I started cooking dinner.  Mary was getting frustrated by our refusal to believe that there was a boat outside, and she finally shouted, "Daddy, we need to talk!"  She grabbed him by the hand and pulled him into the office to have that talk with him.  Meanwhile, I was in the kitchen laughing so hard that I had tears streaming down my face.

Before dinner, John managed to make a short disappearance for a totally "unrelated reason".  When he returned, he took Mary outside to have her show him where she had seen this boat.  Of course, by that time, the canoe was safely hidden on top of the Arizona room, leaving Mary completely bewildered. 

"Daddy, I know I saw a boat here!" she said.  "You hid it; I know you did!  You hid it in the shed!"

John opened up both sheds and proved her wrong. 

It took a while, but we were finally able to get her to drop the subject...that is, until we took a trip to REI that evening.  John and Mary both needed to pick out the hiking boots that they wanted to Christmas, and we had nothing better to do that evening. While we were at REI, we found a display of outdoorsy Christmas ornaments, including a backcountry tent, a roll of toilet paper with an orange spade...and yes, even a canoe!

"Mary, is this the boat you saw?" we asked her.

"No!" she said.  "It was bigger than that!"

So, in honor of that "mystery" boat that she had seen, we bought her that Christmas ornament, to commemorate the year in which we would receive our canoe. (We also bought the other two ornaments: the tent and the toilet paper/spade.)

On Christmas Eve, the mystery was finally revealed, when John presented us with our canoe.  And what did Mary say?  "I told you I saw a boat, Daddy!"

Now that we finally had a canoe, we decided to take the canoe out for the first time on New Year's Day.  The plan was to take the canoe to Bartlett Lake for a short, quarter-mile paddle, to find a geocache on the opposite shore.  It would be a good opportunity to reintroduce us to the water - after all, it had been about eight years since we had paddled!

Of course, we did have one problem: we didn't have our 4Runner to transport the canoe to the lake!  Shortly after Thanksgiving, John had been in a car accident at 32nd Street and Cholla; a woman had run a red light and hit him in the left fender.  As a result, we couldn't get anywhere requiring four-wheel drive, nor could we haul anything.

Fortunately for us, the 4Runner was repaired a little bit ahead of schedule, and we had it back a few days prior to New Year's Day.

So, on Tuesday, January 1, 2008, we strapped our new canoe onto the top of the newly-repaired 4Runner and drove off towards Bartlett Lake for our first canoeing adventure in eight years!

Before we could go paddling, though, we needed to pick up paddles.  Although John's parents no longer had a canoe, they still had their old paddles, and they offered to give them to us to use with our new canoe.  We accepted their offer; so on the way out to the lake, we stopped by their house to pick them up.

Once we had everything that we needed to go canoeing, we headed out towards Bartlett Lake.  En route, of course, we stopped several times to hunt for geocaches within the towns of Cave Creek and Carefree.  We also stopped to buy our Tonto Pass, so that we could park at Bartlett Lake.  (We even had to purchase an extra pass for our boat!)

As the morning progressed, we noticed that the wind was beginning to pick up, and it was becoming stronger all the time.  That wasn't a good sign. John just hoped that the lake would be protected in the wind; otherwise, it was going to be a very short excursion.

The wind did not calm by any means, even after we arrived at Bartlett Lake.  In fact, there were fierce white caps on the lake, and the cold wind was now howling. 

"Are you sure about this?" I asked John as I helped him lower the canoe from the top of the 4Runner. 

"Sure!" he said.  "I used to canoe in weather like this all the time when I was a kid in Illinois!"

After loading up the canoe with our stuff, John got back into the 4Runner and drove up to the parking lot, while Mary and I waited by the boat.  A few minutes later, a man in a pick-up truck drove by us and asked if we were really planning to take that canoe out on the lake.

"I wouldn't go out there, if I were you," he warned us.  "That water out there is dangerous!  Don't go out there, unless you're looking to die!"

Well, now I was worried!  Although I wanted to go canoeing, I didn't want to be out there on that lake, not in those conditions. 

But when John returned, he was raring to go and didn't care to heed the warnings that I had been given.  So we got into the canoe and shoved off...

And immediately, we were tossed around by the waves.  It was everything we could do to control the canoe!  John and I were paddling like mad; and that was when John realized his mistake.  True, he was used to paddling in those conditions, but I was not; and he was trying to take me out on my first canoeing trip in eight years into dangerous waters. 

So, with that, he ordered us to paddle towards shore.  We were throwing in the towel.

After beaching the canoe, we climbed out and walked up to the parking lot to retrieve the 4Runner.  Once the canoe was secure on top again, we drove away to find a picnic area where we could have lunch. 

Now, the wind had not only caused us to abort our first canoeing trip in our new canoe; but it was causing other problems as well.  Although John was certain that the canoe was secure on top of the 4Runner, it kept shifting - sometimes violently - on the roof racks.  We stopped several times on the way back to Carefree, to try to cinch down the ropes again.  Eventually, John gave up on it completely, stating that the canoe wasn't going anywhere, no matter how bad the wind got.

On our way back home, we did some more geocaching.  That adventure took us right into the heart of Carefree, to the famous sundial, where we managed to find a microcache nearby.  We also enjoyed showing Mary how the sundial worked; she had just learned to tell time, so she was fascinated by the device.  She had fun running around the giant sundial, looking for the numbers.  After having found them all, she then spent time playing on the giant gila monster slide nearby.

Once we were finished in Carefree, we continued to cache our way home.  In fact, we spent the rest of the day caching around North Phoenix and found our 200th that afternoon.

So, even though we were forced to abort the maiden voyage of our canoe, the day was not a total waste!  And now that we have a canoe again, I expect that there are many adventures still to come...

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