So here's the thing - if you ever have the choice to press a button on your digital camera that says something to the effect of, "re-format memory card", don't do it. Or, at least if you do it, make sure you back-up all of the photos first. 
   It was late last summer and a friend and I thought it would be great to kayak from Lake Sammamish to Lake Washington. We called it the lake to lake. Someone is totally going to sponsor this one day and make, errr I mean, donate tons of cash to some charity. Hundreds will show to paddle board, kayak, canoe, whatever. They'll pay/raise $100 each and walk away with a free t-shirt. With a pit-stop at Red Hook brewery along the way it's not a bad idea...Anyway, we took a couple of inflatable kayaks (the Helios II and Safari), left a car in Log Boom park, just off of Lake City Way in Kenmore on the North end of Lake Washington.

   We drove around to the dog park in Marymoor Park (Redmond), parked (and paid $1 for parking), and walked down to the Sammamish River, inflated our kayaks, and off we went. I guess we could call it the dog-park to lake paddle, but lake to lake sounds so much better.

   Now, this is normally where the pictures start getting good, and I originally took lots of them. Pictures of our launch site, pictures of the farmland and downtown Woodinville along the way, pictures of Red Hook brewery (early in the paddle, and pictures of some cool houses along the way closer to the end.
  After I got home from this mini-adventure (it took 5 1/2 hours by the way) I had to get ready for my Virgin Islands trip. I was simply trying to figure out how to delete a few folders on my trusty Canon freeze-proof, water-proof, shock-proof, camera and then it happened. Reformat blah-blah-blah. I wonder what that button will do? Poof. All pictures and thus proof of my adventure deleted. Oh well, it just means I'll have to do it again next summer. Lake to lake!
   ~Paul, Micah   ETC

Adventure Notes:
If you go, remember, paddle west-ish, from Lake Sammamish to Lake Washington (that's downstream), give yourself about 5-6 hours plus driving back and forth time, expect a little current at the beginning but pretty slow towards the second half. We heard there might actually be a little waterfall that we missed because we started in the dog park, not actual Lake Sammamish (shhh), we'll check it out next time. Don't drink too much at Red Hook, it's very early in the trip:(

Hello underwater forest explorers! Everyone's Travel Club set out to see if the legend was true: a sunken forest in nearby Lake Sammamish. Washington Legend has it that a thousand year old earthquake caused a landslide, sinking the forest. Apparently there are sunken forests like this one in Lake Washington too. Let's do it!

We put together our inflatable Innova Helios 2 on Sunset Beach in Lake Sammamish State Park.

We're off!

Within' about a 1/2 hour paddling North, we could already see signs of the underwater trees.

...and baby trees growing on top of underwater ones...

Time to head back (that's the state park ahead).

Wildlife.

The legend is true!  The sunken forest does exist! A great trip for everyone, we were probably only gone a couple of hours, totally worth it!
~Paul & Amber   ETC

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