Seventy-Thousand-Dollar Outhouse

D. Yackel Donald

Description

This second book by Donald D. Yackel continues the format and organization of his first, The Idling Bulldozer and Other Paddling Adventures. However, unlike that offering, this one starts with a personal reflection on the author's connection to boats and the water. Subsequent chapters describe paddling trips in Canada, Costa Rica, Florida, and Mexico. While each chapter provides a glimpse into part of the world most readers will never visit, the author's vivid descriptions will take you there. As one reviewer put it: "I am an armchair adventurer. I loved the descriptions of the various areas in the U.S. and Canada...the terrain, the wildlife...places I will never see...places most people will never see or experience. The challenges of paddling in various places and conditions, the hardships, the challenges and the rewards make for a great and interesting read." A second reviewer writes: "Even if you are not a paddling enthusiast, the stories are fun! Don writes in a conversational tone...it's like you're sitting next to him while he tells his stories." Each tale is a memoir of what the author experienced on the adventure: what he saw, what he did, how it felt, whom he traveled with, and the dangers and rewards experienced. Whether you are a veteran kayaker, a rank beginner, or have never been in a boat before, you can find something to relate to in this book.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Memoir

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Date de parution: 29 janvier 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781645757092
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

The Seventy-Thousand- Dollar Outhouse
More Paddling Adventures from the Author of The Idling Bulldozer
Donald D. Yackel
Austin Macauley Publishers
2021-01-29
The Seventy-Thousand-Dollar Outhouse About the Author Dedication Copyright Information © Acknowledgments Foreword: Paddling: An Activity for All Ages Introduction: Why I Like Extended Multi-Day Paddling Trips Chapter One: Boats in My Blood Boats in My Blood: A Personal History Getting Down to Business Sailing, Sailing… Up Close and Personal If Once You Have Slept on an Island Chapter Two: Georgian Bay Odyssey Georgian Bay—July 2004 Getting Started Five Hours on the Road Cairn Island Picking Strawberries Again The Rattlesnake Dance and a Personal Failure Hurry Up and Go! Paddling in the Rain Bugs! Chapter Three: Four Days in the Jungle Prologue The Adventure Begins In the Jungle, the Lion Sleeps… White Paws Saying Goodbye Chapter Four: Lulu Key Lullaby Everglades City, February 2013 Getting Started The Grand Tour Finally, Fakahatchee Return to Everglades City Chapter Five: The Seventy-Thousand-Dollar Outhouse Misty Isles, August 2008 Sugar Island Grenadier Island Staying Put! The $70,000 Outhouse The Bridge Chapter Six: Return to the Saguenay Fjord Return to the Saguenay Fjord, July 2013 Oh, What a Feeling—Check That Engine Light The Long and Winding Road Deflated Detour The Dues We Pay Belugas! The Granite GPS Epilogue Chapter Seven: Deja Vus on the Ochlockonee River Prologue, March 2014 A Trailer Park Nestled in a Swamp Deja Vus Flood Stage Drying Out Paddling Through the Woods A Side Trip What a Difference a Year Makes Last Year Revisited This Year Chapter Eight: On the Bartram History Trail Palatka On the Big Lake The Bartram History Trail The Best Day of the Trip Back to Palatka Chapter Nine: Loreto to La Paz by Kayak Part I: The Gift, February 2, 2018 You Can’t Get There from Here Every Adventure Begins with a First Step The Endless Bus Ride Finally, Loreto On the Malecon The Old Capital City A First Meeting Somewhere Between Shy and Anti-Social Should It Stay, or Should It Go? Part II: Along the Baja Peninsula, the Adventure Begins. We’re All Going to Die! Disappointment Finally, On the Water Taking Care of Business What’s for Dinner? Breaking Camp I Get to Paddle the Single Finally, Out of the Wind The Joys of a Layover Day Our First Hike Siesta Getting Wet, Staying Clean Will This Wind Ever Stop? Ramon’s Catastrophe Publication Day Our Longest Paddling Day The Mission and the Ranch San Evaristito Nazanin Taco Soup and a Full Moon A Lazy Layover Day San Evaristo Lupe Sierra’s and Maggi Mae’s Restaurant The Legend of El Mechudo We Meet El Mechudo Into the Water El Portugues and Trip’s End Goodbye and Going Home Part III: Epilogue
About the Author
Donald D. Yackel has spent 24 years paddling his 17-foot kayak on extended wilderness trips, traveling over 3700 miles and spending 324 days sleeping in small tents in all kinds of settings. The stories in this second book, like his first, The Idling Bulldozer and Other Paddling Adventures , are drawn from his experiences on some of those travels. Combining his life-long interest in writing and his natural ability as a storyteller, he is able to take the reader to places they may never see or experience. Don has been drawn to water and boats since he was a child. It’s very unlikely that that will ever change.
Dedication
I dedicate this book to my children and grandchildren in the hope that by reading about these adventures, they will learn more about the values of their father and grandfather, and that they will be encouraged to seek the spiritual connection that water, wildlife, and wilderness can give.
Copyright Information ©
Donald D. Yackel (2021)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.
Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
All of the events in this memoir are true to the best of author’s memory. The views expressed in this memoir are solely those of the author.
Ordering Information
Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.
Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data
Yackel, Donald D.
The Seventy-Thousand-Dollar Outhouse
ISBN 9781645757078 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781645757085 (Hardback)
ISBN 9781645757092 (ePub e-book)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020923842
www.austinmacauley.com/us
First Published (2021)
Austin Macauley Publishers LLC
40 Wall Street, 33rd Floor, Suite 3302
New York, NY 10005
USA
[e-mail]
[phone]
Acknowledgments
I want to acknowledge the continued support and encouragement of my wife, Lisa, for my paddling and writing endeavors. Without her, these adventures and books would not have happened.
I’d also like to acknowledge the work of my editor, Rowena Cernan, of the Book Concierge for her invaluable help in cleaning up the writing of a punctuationally challenged author.
Finally, thank you to all the wonderful folks who people the tales presented here. You have enriched my life more than you will ever know.
Foreword

Paddling: An Activity for All Ages
I’m not young anymore. As a matter of fact, I haven’t been young for a long time. The adventures in my books began when I was in my early fifties. In the last one, I was 75. I’m not telling you this to say that sea kayaking is an old man’s pastime. Rather, I am saying that kayaking and its cousin, canoeing, are activities that can be engaged in by people of all ages and, like tennis, golf, and fishing, paddle sports can be enjoyed well into senior-hood. While I was often the oldest paddler on many of my trips, the paddlers’ ages ranged from the mid-twenties to more than 80.
This illustrates that you do not have to be young to start enjoying paddle sports. You can begin at any age. Whether you only want to paddle a simple recreational kayak around a small, familiar lake or, like me, want to go on multi-day trips in different and exciting places, it’s never too late to start. Find a local outfitter who offers day trips and get started. If you like it, you might someday find yourself sleeping in a Costa Rican Jungle, enjoying the Saguenay Fjord in Quebec, or padding on the Sea of Cortez along the Baja Mexican coast.
Introduction

Why I Like Extended Multi-Day Paddling Trips
Why do I favor extended paddling trips over day trips? First, I don’t enjoy day trips the way I used to because it takes almost as much preparation and clean-up work to paddle for three or four hours as it does to go away for several days. Multi-day trips allow me to spend many more hours in the outdoors, often in wilderness areas where the trappings of our modern, climate-controlled, high tech lives mean little, where we must accommodate the natural rhythms of dawn and dusk, hot and cold, calm and wind, sun and rain, on nature’s schedule, not our own.
Second, self-planned and self-supported multi-day trips require investigation and preparation. The planning becomes part of the adventure. These trips are exciting, requiring the paddler to cope with conditions as they are and make adjustments. In the end, there is a lot of satisfaction in successfully completing self-planned trips. Completing such a trip brings a level of satisfaction and pride I don’t get when I just show up for an adventure that someone else has planned and arranged.
However, as I’ve gotten older, and perhaps lazier, I’ve gravitated toward, supported, group trips. I have done many of these over the years from Georgian Bay to the Hudson and Potomac Rivers, Costa Rica, Mexico, and even the Colorado. 1 But since moving to Florida, I have paddled many supported trips with an organization called Paddle Florida. 2
Paddle Florida sponsors one trip in each of the five water districts in the state every year. As a new resident, I have seen parts of Florida that many old-timers don’t even know about. A Paddle Florida trip includes all of your meals, preplanning for campsites, evening entertainment, and transportation to your car at the end of the event; it does this at about half the cost of a similar trip with a commercial outfitter. Two of the stories in this book are about Paddle Florida adventures.
Finally, and this is by no means least important, through kayaking I have met and become friends with other paddlers from around the state, the country, and the world. This was my experience on the several Great Hudson River Paddles I was on years ago, where I made friends I continue to paddle with to this day. This has been my experience on Paddle Florida trips, too. After many of these adventures, I feel that this, more than anything else, keeps me coming back.
1 Several of these trips are detailed in my first book, The Idling Bulldozer and Other Paddling Adventures . ↩︎ 2 Go to www.paddleflorida.org for more information ↩︎
Chapter One Boats in My Blood

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Boats in My Blood: A Personal History
I was born under Aquarius, the water sign. Maybe that explains my life long attraction to the water and boats. Or maybe it has to do with genetics. It turns out that my maternal grandmother’s grandfather, John Vermilyea, my great, great grandfather, was a boat builder who, among other things, built barges for the Erie Canal. I’ve built boats too, including a small sailboat and a kayak. He had a place on Oneida Lake, the same lake where I spent my summers until I left home. My grandfathers and