Your Perfect Summer Day — Spend It Kayaking With Us!
What makes a day genuinely perfect?
I've been thinking about this for a long time — probably since the summer after 5th grade, in the back of a Ford Bronco with no air conditioning, somewhere between the Badlands and the Black Hills, catching Casey Kasem's American Top 40 on whatever stations the dial could find. I wasn't thinking about itineraries. I was just excited to finally be in South Dakota — a state I had checked out a library book about no fewer than thirty times over the previous two years. My parents even surprised me with my own library-edition copy that Christmas. I had been ready for this trip for a long time.
What I remember from that trip isn't really what we saw — it's what we felt. The bone-chilling cold of the Missouri River, which served as our campsite bath. The unique ozone smell from a thunderstorm over the Badlands at dusk. Baking in the oven-like heat of Las Vegas. The way the air bounced beneath us as we flew in a prop plane over the Grand Canyon and my Mom's white knuckles gripping the green vinyl seat. The Wyoming scrublands going on forever in every direction. My dad's left arm getting considerably more tan than his right. The way the hours felt genuinely long in the best possible way — because we weren't rushing toward anything.
Perfect days, I've come to believe, are rarely made of things. They're made of time. Unhurried, unscheduled, genuinely present time with the people you most want to be with. The problem is that we're all so good at being busy that we forget to make room for them.
I think about this every time I lead a Perfect Picnic Day.
There's a moment — it happens on almost every trip — somewhere in the middle of the afternoon, after the paddling and the lunch and the swimming and the rock hunting, when the conversation goes quiet in the good way. Not awkward. Just full. Someone stretches out on a Lake Huron beach, looks up at the sky, and pauses to really study a cloud. Someone else goes very still because there is something swimming across the sheltered cove that appears to be — yes, that is absolutely a porcupine. Phones have been ignored in lifejacket pockets all day. Nobody is thinking about tomorrow.
Delivering these moments is the purpose of this business.
A Perfect Picnic Day is a private guided kayak tour — just your group, your own schedule, and a chef-prepared picnic waiting for you on a beach most people will never find because there's no road to it. It lasts most of the day. Your guide carries lunch in the kayak and sets out chairs and a blanket while you stretch your legs on shore. We handle every logistical decision so you don't have to. Your job is to show up and be present.
The lunch is made fresh for your group and built around what you actually eat. Dietary restrictions included, genuinely — vegetarian, vegan, gluten free. If you've been in the UP for a few days you already know that options can be limited. This meal is different. Someone thought carefully about it.
We offer Perfect Picnic Days in four locations across the eastern Upper Peninsula: the Les Cheneaux Islands, Horseshoe Bay Wilderness (minutes from St. Ignace), along the DeTour Peninsula, and Drummond Island. If you're already headed toward Tahquamenon Falls or Pictured Rocks, or planning to hike the Narnia Trail, we're not far out of the way.
With so many UP destinations being an hour or two away, or ferry tickets available the night before, you can alter your travel plans practically on a whim. A Perfect Picnic Day is the one experience worth planning ahead for. We'll work with you on timing if the weather calls for it.
It won't be exactly like the summer after 5th grade with Casey Kasem and a tan line. But the feeling — of time that felt genuinely long, of being somewhere beautiful with people you love, of a day that became a story — that part we can absolutely deliver.
[Learn more about Perfect Picnic Days →]