Ken Campbell, Author at The Last Wilderness

Third time’s a charm

Posted by Ken Campbell April 2, 2009 0 Comment 865 views

I’m going back out there again this weekend, back to where I left off. I figure I’ll start from Suquamish on Saturday morning, paddle the length of Bainbridge Island, then meet the family at Manchester. A little car camping, maybe a round or two of cribbage… much more civilized than the way I rolled on […]

In search of safety

Posted by Ken Campbell April 1, 2009 0 Comment 883 views

Buck Tilton, co-founder of the Wilderness Medical Institute has this to say: “Adventure, then, is a stretch of the mind, an expansion of the heart. Without adventure, life becomes a book with only one page. Without adventure, the human spirit withers, and then dies. ‘Give me the storm and tempest of thought and action,’ wrote […]

Expectations v. Results

Posted by Ken Campbell March 30, 2009 0 Comment 1001 views

I thought I would need to paddle at night. Given that the wind is a major factor in the touring paddleboard game, I expected that I would need to do a certain amount of my paddling after dark, when the wind usually abates. I went as far as installing a mount for a light near […]

A Change

Posted by Ken Campbell March 29, 2009 0 Comment 1002 views

A bit of housekeeping today… I’ve had a few people ask me, just in the last week, why the “Comment” feature on this site had been disabled. No good reason, I suppose. So I turned it on… you can now leave your thoughts, suggestions and other input right here, just a click away. If you […]

Puget Sound Challenge – Day 7

Posted by Ken Campbell March 29, 2009 0 Comment 929 views

Being that it was a Sunday morning, and being that I’d been up and moving my camp to higher ground at 1:30 in the morning, and also that I knew it was going to be a short day anyway… with all these considerations tilting me in one direction, I slept in. Where the other days […]

Puget Sound Challenge – Day 6

Posted by Ken Campbell March 28, 2009 0 Comment 967 views

I awoke to a damp sleeping bag, the night’s condensation soaking through to chill me before I even got out of bed. I don’t know what the temperatures got down to during the night, but when I got up, well before sunrise, it was still below freezing. As I packed up the camp, a fog […]

Puget Sound Challenge – Day 5

Posted by Ken Campbell March 26, 2009 0 Comment 921 views

After taking the second day of this leg off, more or less, I couldn’t complain that I wasn’t rested. I woke up at my beachside camp on the Toandos Peninsula just before dawn and I was underway within the hour. Even though the wind was still blowing, it hadn’t picked up to the speed of […]

Puget Sound Challenge – Day 4

Posted by Ken Campbell March 25, 2009 0 Comment 854 views

My internal alarm clock (apparently located near my bladder), woke me right at 6 AM. Forty-five minutes later, I was packed and ready to depart. I rode the river out to salt water, until it got too shallow where it fanned out toward the canal. I spooked a couple of dozen harbor seals from their […]

Puget Sound Challenge – Day 3

Posted by Ken Campbell March 24, 2009 0 Comment 963 views

An early Wednesday morning found me picking up where I left off back at the end of February. The day was overcast and calm, the water glossy and undisturbed from the near shore as far up Hood Canal as I could see. There was snow in the foothills across the canal and the clearcuts stood […]

Pictures from an expedition

Posted by Ken Campbell March 23, 2009 0 Comment 872 views

I finished the second leg of the Puget Sound Challenge yesterday. Mary and Micah picked me up at the Bella Luna Pizzaria, just off the water at Suquamish. (Excellent pie and a location that can’t be beat.) I calculated the total distance today – I didn’t get as far as I wanted, but I am […]