Hi fellow Hiveians,

Today I wanted to share the canoe trip that I went on with the little man!

Canoeing The Ipswich River

Canoeing has been one of the things that I've been looking forward to exploring with my son for quite some time. I've loved going canoeing for a while now but I don't get to do it often, because before I really wasn't in a financial state to be renting one, and we certainly didn't have the space to own one. I rented one a few times and it was a lot of fun but I knew that it would be something that I would have to do later in life.

Fast forward a few years and we got to one of our first canoe trips together!

The little man has definitely been an outdoorsman for his whole life, from when he was born really. He was always happier when we were outside, if I took him out on a walk in the carriage, if I took him out on my back in the carry backpack, he was always game for an adventure! When he could walk, the next step for him was to always keep an eye out for any type of water. Puddles, rivers, streams, brooks, creeks, you name it he was into it! This has been a consistent theme for him in his little life and it's absolutely a lot of fun for me!

This canoe trip is one that I took many years ago because it's a great one that's open to the public. You can rent a canoe along the Ipswich river in Topsfield Massachusetts, pretty close to the coastline but far enough away that this whole river is fresh water. It's got all kinds of beauty up and along it that's for sure!

When we were on the trip, right in the beginning we saw this hell of a hazard here. I haven't seen an active bee hive in the wild for many years. I've only seen a few in my life for whatever reason but the last one I saw was probably 10 years ago or more, it's been that long! We weren't in the canoe for more than 5 minutes when I was paddling and we came up to this. I saw it when we were getting kind of close to it, but I wasn't entirely sure what it was. The little man spotted it and we confirmed what it was: a giant bee hive! That was pretty wild and thankfully we didn't have to steer the boat near it to get around a tree or something lol it was cool to share it on Hive though :D.

The little man is definitely my little partner in outdoor crime though! I love that he's always game for whatever adventures that we can come up with. I drove over to the canoe place, telling him that we were going fishing but not really giving him many details. Sometimes he can be a little bit of a pain about some things. If he's got one thing in mind, it takes quite a bit to steer him away from it, which I guess is a good thing. When it comes to our fishing spot though, he can occasionally be a stick in the mud! There are some fishing spots that we go to that we usually catch some things but if he doesn't have the idea himself, then he's a little hesitant about it and fights me on it lol.

With him not having much experience with being on a canoe, we were on it for a bit and he was already asking to get off so he can walk around on the river bank. I don't blame him too much, the seats and cushion weren't the most comfortable! I know it's a lot better than not having a cushion at all, which has happened to me lol but I didn't mind giving him a break. As he's getting older, one of the things that I want to make sure is that I don't argue with him too much because I fear for the days where he's too old and says no he doesn't want to do some of these things with me 😭 .

One thing I wish we were able to do was actually catch a fish! We were only on the river for about 90 minutes before he was satisfied with the trip and wanted to go back. He sadly didn't catch a single fish when we were out there despite trying many times. I think if he was able to snag a couple fish, even small sunfish, he would have been a lot more satisfied and would have stayed out there longer with me. When we got into the canoe and got onto the river after the bee hive, he asked me to set up his fishing pole so that he can try to do a little fishing lol. Can't complain too much though, as it's always nice to just be outside with him at my side! I cherish these father-son bonding times and hope that the Hive blockchain here stays connected for many more years, so I can eventually show him the catalog of things that I've taken as he's gotten older.

The Ipswich river here is a beautiful, ~40 mile river that flows from one of the larger rivers out into the Atlantic ocean at the mouth of it and it's got quite a lot of variety along the way! Some parts of the river are nice and wide, can be 50 or 60 feet at some points and other points it's only about 10 feet and lazy. The canoe/kayak rental place here is at the foot of one of the dams and you have a few nice options. You can either canoe up the river yourself and eventually get to a point where you turn around and head back down or you can have them drive you and drop you off at one of the key points along the river.

The trip we did was the initial one and I decided to try an easy one. I just launched the boat right off the rental places' dock and paddled up the river to see how the little man would handle it. Sometimes he gets scared of things and I didn't want this to be a situation where he was too scared to continue but they already dropped us off 2 hours upstream and we had to suffer the anguish of him being uncomfortable on the ride back lol. That would have guaranteed that he wouldn't be interested in another canoe trip any time soon!

There were two bridges that we made it to and under. This was the last one. This area here was nice, it was pretty lazy and the little man was able to hop out of the canoe and get it right up on shore to park it while he was walking around, threw a few casts fishing and just meandered around stretching his legs. It was at this point that he asked to turn around and go back, which actually worked out pretty well for us both!

This picture here is a really nice one, not just visually. Behind us were a huge mass of super dark thunderclouds! Hahaha. We made it back to the dock, put all our stuff back in the car and closed the door literally just in time. When I shifted the car in park, the rain drops just started. By the time we got to the traffic light at the end of the road heading back, it was downpouring. When we had gotten out of the river, there were 2 families that had just gotten onto the river LOL. I hope that they stopped at the bridges and just hung out underneath! The rain lasted about 45 minutes, it was quite a thunderstorm!

The river here is definitely a beautiful one! I would love to come back here in the fall. Being able to be on a river in quintessential New England weather, with the trees turning beautiful fall colors, the temperature being a little on the cooler side and the water just flowing along. That's definitely going to be a beautiful trip and one that I can hope to convince my son to undertake!

^-CmplXty. _{Real human written content, never AI.}

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