The first post on the @kayaktoschool instagram feed is a photograph of a tightly-packed kayak on the side of a country road. The text which accompanies the photograph reads, “20 minutes, half a mile in and the wheel broke already.”

It was the very first challenge @kayaktoschool would face over the next two days, but it certainly wasn’t the last.

The @kayaktoschool instagram feed belongs to Stone senior Gralyn K, and its sole purpose is to document Gralyn’s attempt to, well, kayak to school. “I began thinking about it five or six years ago,” Gralyn says. “But this trip was jump-started by a video I watched, a film, where Beau Miles kayaked to work. The whole idea...of having a different way to commute, it just really interested me. Instead of going the normal 25 minute drive, just doing it completely differently, seeing it a completely different way.”

If you live in Wrightsville, “paddling” to school in downtown Lancaster is a complex project, one which demands both deep planning and real expertise and serious discipline. Gralyn began his commute at 7am on Saturday morning with a one mile portage from his driveway to the Susquehanna River. What followed was 10 miles of kayaking on the Susquehanna, 20 miles of kayaking on the Conestoga, two nights of camping river-side, and finally, an additional mile of portage -- mostly uphill -- through Lancaster City to Stone’s front door. “A police officer saw me pulling the kayak and asked me where I parked,” Gralyn says. “When I told him what I was doing he kind of said, ‘Have fun…’”

The hardest part of the trip? “Lake Clarke, the Susquehana,” Gralyn says. “It was really windy and really choppy that morning. I think I was three or four miles in, I was probably 50 yards out from shore, I was just going into every wave, every wave was just crashing down onto my boat, water just started to collect on the inside and I was thinking it was going to sink for about 20 minutes!”

Throughout the trip, Gralyn was offered help from friends and family -- everything from transportation to Clif bars -- but he accepted none of it. “That would be cheating,” Gralyn says, it would have completely changed the experience. He wanted to experience the full challenge, he wanted to be self-sufficient, and he wanted to know if it was even possible. “Water used to be so common for traveling everywhere and now we never use it. It’s the road less traveled now.”

Perhaps less traveled with good reason. At 1:28pm on Monday afternoon, Stone senior Lily G. posted on Slack, “Come cheer Gralyn on! Outside!” and fifteen minutes later a very tired and very wet Gralyn arrived at Stone’s front door and was greeted immediately by loud cheers from the collected Stone student body -- 54.5 hours after he left his driveway.

After 54.5 hours of paddling, camping, battling river chop, and battling broken kayak wheels, @kayaktoschool had proven that he could in fact travel by kayak to Stone.

Just maybe not every day. “The trip was great,” Gralyn says. “But it was nice sleeping in my own bed!”