Yesterday I was sworn at and cursed out unexpectedly but that persons now on ignore. Here is the post I had written about some of my canoeing adventures.
You sure are adventurous Dave. Was your 100 mile canoe trip with portages on a designated or marked route and did you encounter any bears or other large animals?
I’ve done a 4 day canoe trip with 10 or 12 others along the French River . One of the people was a past high school music teacher and his wife, who was a friend of mine. Many of the others were from our jazz band so I knew most of them. It was a great trip. Unfortunately I have no pictures of it.
My husband and I have hiked and gone interior canoeing up at Killarney. It was a 100 kilometre route.
The first day in I thought the mosquitoes were going to carry us away they were so bad but as the day progressed, the mosquitoes lessened substantially.
It was a fun trip that lasted about 7 or 8 days. The first night we were there we were near a bog and at night the sound of frogs was loudly comical. We couldn’t stop laughing.
The next morning we had a mother bear peering through our back window. I’m not sure who was loudest, my screech or our dog barking but she ran away.
Once at a safe distance, we got out of the tent and saw a brood of baby bears up on a ledge nearby. A close call. I’ve got a photo somewhere of the bear that I’ll try and find.
Our next two trips were in interior Algonquin Park. We started off at Canoe Lake and our route was similar to this one. We did go out of the park for a portion of it.
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It was a very long trip that took 18 days but I can’t say how long in kilometres/ miles it was. All I can say was that some of the portages took all day and some more than a day. The first trip I carried all our dogs food which was a lot since she was a shepherd. The second trip I made her a doggie backpack so she could carry her own food and she did really good with it.
On two of our portages we ran directly into a bear and made the decision to keep marching along with the canoe on our shoulders. With our dog barking, they’d always run away.
Did I mention that the portages were a LOT of work. Carrying a canoe for miles at a time is one thing. Carrying a canoe along with a heavy backpack is truly something else.
Our route was so much fun though. The beginning of the route is basically a river leading to many small different lakes. There was canoe lake , little lake, otter lake, big trout lake. When we stopped at Otter Lake and set up camp, I actually went swimming and met some otters. They were playing in the flowing river that entered the lake and I got a chance to swim really close to them. It was such a magical moment. I never realized otters were so playful before.
Another lake we stopped at we made some fishing rods and caught some sun fish, white fish and bass fish. I never caught any bass fish though. My husband caught those but I was still stoked that I even caught fish with a DIY fishing pole.
We cooked the fish over an open fire and it was really good. Unfortunately all this attracted bears. Being woken by a bear sniffing underneath your flimsy tent is somewhat frightening but once our dog barked it ran away and the next time we caught fish we were smarter about it.
At night you could hear the loons echoing off the water and it was so beautiful. Early morning mist was often settling on the lakes; with the loons echoing off the water, it was so very peaceful. It sounds like a Dan Gibson Solitude album.
We both looked forward to the mornings since back then we drank and we ‘d have fresh percolated coffee with Baileys Irish cream withMy reasoning for this was that it was a cream that we could have with our coffee that wouldn’t go bad and I’m sticking with that excuse. Lol ! We both no longer drink but it was fun at the time. We were young.
The only time I was a bit scared was the last night. All day we were paddling hard and in the pouring rain. My husband smoked cigarettes back then and had run out of cigarettes and we really should have stopped paddling before it got dark and didn’t.
It was so dark that we couldn’t tell where the land ended and the ground began. With no way of navigating we had to wing it by banging into the shore. Unfortunately the shoreline was so dense with brush that setting up a tent was not possible. It literally took us hours before we found the trail and a place where we could set up our tent. Our dog looked like she lost all our trust that night and I can’t blame her. We messed up.
The next morning we got out of there as fast as we could and headed to the nearest place that sold junk food. Just sitting in a car feels so surreal when you’ve been paddling for days and I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to sit in a car as then.
We do have pictures of some of these journeys and I shall try and find them.
I forgot to mention that we saw a lot of moose as well as bears in Algonquin park. They mostly hung out in the water. We paddled by many of them. That was exciting.
