Saturday, in the park (on the pond)

On Saturday, Sue and I headed into South Windsor to take care of some errands. We are still living in the hotel, but only for this weekend and part of next week. Then, we will be actually living in South Windsor, CT. So, we headed to Evergreen Walk, the smaller but more enjoyable of the two malls in the area. It is an outdoor shopping mall, very similar to the Short Pump mall in the West End of Richmond. Mostly high end stores, but enough diversity to make walking around fun.

So, after the bank to get my signatures on new accounts, and the post office to pick up our forwarded mail, we headed to Evergreen Walk. Eventually, we made our way into the LL Bean store. Sue had been there with the kids, but I had never actually been at the mall. Outside of the store, they were having a good many activities to celebrate their one-year anniversary of being open in South Windsor. One of the things they were doing was giving shorter versions of their walk-on adventure classes for free. This included GPS Techno Treasure Hunt, flycasting, and kayaking. After talking with the kids, we signed up for the kayaking class. This was a somewhat shortened class, with about 50 minutes on the water after some basic instruction and transportation to the pond. They normally charge $15 per person for each of these adventures, a nominal fee for some good instruction, all equipment, etc.

The driver pulled up to drop off the previous class, then took the 14 of us to the pond. We were given safety instructions, PFDs, paddles, and sent off to our kayaks (instruction was good, stressing safety, how to paddle, and some warm up exercises). I was in a 14’ kayak, as was Jake. Sue and KT were in 12’ ones. We all had a great time paddling, getting to know how to turn, and trying to keep from running into each other much. Both Sue and I got some solo time with the kids to talk about the experience, if they would do it again, and if they would eventually kayak together. We have so much water around us, both flat and running, that we would be silly not to purchase two kayaks and start to explore the area.

I can’t say enough about the LL Bean crew. They ensured that we had a great time, and kept it very low key, the way kayaking is supposed to be.

http://www.llbean.com/outdoorsOnline/odp/walkon/odsSouthWindsor.html