DILETTANTE PADDLER

Calkin's Landing

Mercer Island, WA

Trips

Calkin's Landing is a small, neighborhood park on Mercer Island. Unfortunately, it's upstaged as a boat launching spot by Proctor Landing which is less than a block away. While Calkin's landing is a nice enough park and a short walk between parking and the water, it only has three parking spots and you'll have to haul your gear down a fairly narrow path and a few stairs. Proctor Landing, on the other hand, has several more parking spots and there are only a few steps between parking and the water. Once on the water, though you'll get great Lake Washington paddling from either with only minor noise from I-90. In summary, while Calkin's Landing is perfectly serviceable and would work well as a backup spot (if there's parking), I'd recommend Proctor Landing instead.

Pros: Nice location with some great views once you're on the water. Plenty of grassy areas to set up your gear or have a picnic. Relatively short walk between parking and launch.

Cons: Only three parking spots. Narrow set of stairs between the park and the water. Close to I-90, so it's relatively loud until you paddle away.

Overall: Good as a backup spot, but go to Proctor Landing instead.

7/24/18

After a long time of not being able to go out paddling, I finally got my chance. A morning paddle on a day that was supposed to get to 90 degrees after getting a cortisone shot in my right hand. (The doctor said it was ok to go paddling as long as I got done by the time the anesthesia wore off.) Not optimal conditions, but I figured I should take what I could get. Deciding to try someplace new, and realizing that I'd never launched off Mercer Island before, I went to the internet and found a place to launch. As you'll see from the map above, there are several little parks along this stretch of road and after verifying that I could launch from the one closest to the freeway, I chose Calkin's Landing as my launching point.

And to be honest, it was fine. I had the only car there, and there was only one other group of people--a mother and her two daughters. Granted, I was there at 9 am on a Tuesday, but I'm guessing that a lot of people walk to this park instead of drive. I set up my boat, carried everything down to the water and set off. The noise from I-90 was somewhat annoying, but it quickly dissipated as I paddled south. It wasn't until I saw a nice lady named Carol launching her kayak from a different park (called Proctor Landing), about a block south of Calkin's that I began to regret my launch point decision. Apparently I'm not the only one who's made this mistake as Carol revealed that she did something similar the first time she paddled here.

After that, though, it was a nice little trip. The lake was nearly as calm as glass, the weather was beautiful and not yet blazingly hot, and the speed boats and jet skis didn't make an appearance until nearly the end of the trip. Carol was kind enough to accompany me and pointed out a few of the sights, although, admittedly, those were mostly the monstrously huge houses on the island and who was believed to own them. There were nice views of Mt. Rainier and the far shore as well. A few planes could be seen coming in for a landing at SeaTac, and one or two seaplanes made an appearance as well. Carol said that if you wanted to make a day of it you could get around the south end of the island and get all the way up to Luther Burbank Park. However, since we were both on time limits and it was getting hotter by the moment we just paddled south for about an hour and headed back.

Not anything terribly exciting, but it's always nice to find a new launch point and it was a beautiful day to go on a paddle with a friendly person.