Packing- Overnight Kayaking

Last weekend, we did an overnight kayak trip on the Clarion River.  We started at Lazy River Canoe Rental in Ridgway, Pa and yakked 30 miles down river.  We spent the night along the river, and did I mention, we had 6 kids under 9!? (with 4 adults)

Doing this might seem impossible if you overthink it.  My husband kept giving me the side-eye and what-ifs as I planned this adventure.  Mostly, about what to bring with us, and what to leave at home.  So, here's what I packed.

The first thing I did was go out to purchase some things we didn't have, but thought we would need.  Now, this list is not extensive because we are on a serious budget right now.  Although I was worried about that part, there wasn't anything I was missing that we truly needed.  I would love to have a personal coffee maker for the outdoors, but that would be a luxury more than a necessity.  What I did purchase though were a couple of dry bags and straps- not a luxury, a definite necessity!

I packed our dry bags, two filled with sleeping bags and one filled with changes of clothes, 2 sets per kid per day (one for adults), a swimsuit, a sweatshirt, sweatpants and a change of shoes.  They wear their water shoes on the boats, so even a pair of flip flops makes it nice to get out of the wet shoes. Easy peezy!

Tent, check!

Cooler-  I packed drinks and lots of them.  I stashed some extra water bottles and drinks in different cubbies and spaces in our kayaks that I could refill the cooler with.  It was HOT!  We had cheese that I presliced and put in ziplocs, deli meat and cheese, brats and hot dogs, and Hershey bars in the cooler.  In the little pocket in the front of the cooler, I had sunscreen and bug spray for easy access.

Our dry food bag had crackers, beef sticks and turkey sticks, jerkey, granola bars, trail mix, cheeze it crackers, and our bread items (buns for brats and dogs and bread for lunch meat)  Every food item I could get into a ziploc bag went into one.  I had snack bags with snacks in them.  Anything in the cooler was in a ziploc.  I wanted everything to stay dry!

I packed some soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste, a hairbrush, deodorant, dry shampoo, sanitizer, first aid kit, flash lights and baby wipes into a bag.

We also had a dry box for cell phone, etc, lighter, some fire starter, a gun, rope, and a knife stashed throughout some of the bags.

That was it!  It was almost too easy!  I learned that I can actually pack a little more than I did as the kayaks will hold a lot more than we expected.

Here is what the boats looked like all packed up and ready for launch!

    The three on the right are ours, and the three on the left are friends'.  You can see how our tent fit right underneath a wet bag on the green kayak.  The cooler was in reach to grab drinks on the float on the blue kayak.  There was a snack bag right behind my seat so I could easily grab and pass snacks to kids.

 

These were the dry bags we purchased from Walmart that were $13 and did a great job at keeping everything dry, and some of our necessities packed up and ready to be loaded.

I'll be sharing more about our trip next!