Paddling Lightning Lake

On Friday, June 16, 2017, after breathtaking drive to panoramic vistas with Tony and Dee Dee, the two of us headed out to kayak Lightning Lake - something we've been wanting to do since we first hiked around the lake a year ago.

As is always the case in the mountains, it started clouding up in the afternoon as we started out on our paddle from the day use area.  Below, you can see that Kathy is bundled up (the air temperature was about 51F):

Despite the cool air, blue sky succeeded in gracing parts of our afternoon, and made views down the lake very inspiring:

Before the mid-afternoon winds, the lake was still quite calm, enough for us to catch this reflective view back in the direction from which our little boats had floated:

Because we only had a couple of hours between our mountain drive in the morning and the impending afternoon wind and rains, we couldn't paddle the entire length of the lake.  We had to turn back when we reached Rainbow Bridge.  However, we were rewarded by a close encounter with the local goose family, mama and papa herding the little ones across the narrow channel to safety on the far bank:

Kathy thought Rainbow Bridge made a good backdrop for the photo of the goose family, so she asked to have her snapshot taken with the bridge, too:

Our paddling took us all around the west end of the lake, poking in and out of numerous coves.  Every once in a while some small detail caught our eye, such as this half-sunken tree stump on which a colony of moss and grasses has taken hold:

Luckily, the afternoon warmed as we kayaked.  We had dressed sufficiently warmly that we were comfortable the whole outing.  It gave us confidence to try some more cool weather paddles in future travels.