The Pelican Briefly: What adventures await!

You never know what adventures await when you go out your front door. I planned to launch on Killarney Lake, paddle downriver to Rainy Hill boat ramp and meet up with the Coeur d'Alene Kayak Club before they left for Anderson Lake on Saturday, July 30.

I expected a short trip down the river and back to Killarney. The plan was to paddle around the islands and get some photos of the old pilings on the west end of the lake. I never made it to the pilings. Isn't like that in life; you make plans and have expectations, but then a different door opens.

Time and schedules always trip me up. I'm either early to the party or underestimate how long it takes to get from point A to point B. Killarney to Rainy Hill and back was supposed to take an hour. Obviously, I had an inflated view of my paddling prowess. It took over an hour just to reach the Kayak Club at Rainy Hill. Then it took awhile to paddle away from this wonderful group of people.

But it was on the trip back upriver that I stumbled upon a circling flock of white birds. There must have been 60-70 large birds riding thermals a mile in front of me. At first I assumed they were seagulls. But there was something different about them. Earlier, I heard Frans, the club's trip leader, claim to have seen pelicans in the Chain Lakes area.

By the time I exchanged my wide angle lens for a 300mm zoom (you try that in a bobbing, wet kayak on a busy river), the birds were much closer. I was in the right place at the right time. All the twists and turns of my morning put me in front of a large group of pelicans swirling around, looking like a bunch of fighter jets.

For the next 25 minutes I took a "boatload" of photos, thanks to a compact flash card and a high ISO. It was the most amazing sight I had seen in a long time. Who would have thought to find a pod of pelicans over North Idaho waters 300 miles from the ocean?