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| Day 1: Silka gets comfortable |
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Day 2: Cat Bay, Ramsay Lake - a very
buggy campsite! |
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| Day 2 - Cat Bay: Table set for dinner |
Another fantastic canoe trip! This was Rein's 7th and Silka's 5th. We all squeezed into 'Big Bertha', our Swift Yukon, for one last year - next year we will be travelling in two canoes. The theme of this year's trip was bugs and blueberries. With one swipe of the hand you'd come up with 15 mosquitos and 20 blueberries. I remember at one point I was paddling the kids around Circle Lake - a tiny lake between a km long portage and a 200 meter portage - to keep the mosquitoes at bay while Tom went back and forth to portage our remaining gear. He was our hero that day.
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| Day 2 - Cat Bay: dinner prep |
Like every year, the challenges we faced - the bugs, a few wet days, a really cold day and an afternoon spent drying everything out after a dump in the rapids - provided us some comical moments and made us stronger. And a 'low point' would be quickly forgotten by our awe of what surrounded us - an undetected bald eagle lifting off of the branch of a white pine just a few feet away from us, the shadow from the expansion of its wings moving across the bow of our canoe. Or by the thrill of running a rapid, the kids cheering in delight as we bounced through to the bottom. I never get bored of it.
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| Day 3: Silka's 1st water colour painting |
Pierre Trudeau wrote in an essay titled
Exhaustion and Fullfillment: The Ascetic Canoe, "What sets a canoe expedition apart is that it purifies you more rapidly and inescapably than any other. Travel a thousand miles by train and you are a brute; pedal five hundred on a bicycle and you remain basically a bourgeois; paddle a hundred in a canoe and you are already a child of nature." Maybe this is why, after our 200 km average trip every year, I always find it hard to head back to my regular life. Tom always cocks his eyebrow at me when I suggest that we start homesteading when we start driving home. Many people when they ask how long we were out there think two weeks is such a long time - for me, I feel we are just getting started. By the second week all the noise that surrounds us at home has been drowned out by the silence, my rhomboids have stopped aching from hours of lifting and dipping my paddle in and out of the water and the four of us have become a well-oiled portaging machine pleased with how efficiently we can now get our gear to the next lake. I could stay out there for another month or two. When I get back I quickly forget the moment when I was bug-bitten, wet and cold and giving Tom the heads-up that my canoe tripping days were numbered. He would stay silent in those moments and let me figure out on my own that in less than a year we will be driving down remote highways and logging roads and once again I will be excited about the adventures that would be awaiting us.
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| Day 3: Spanish Lake |
Next year will be a different trip with two canoes - I am excited and a bit apprehensive about what this change will bring. We will not cover the same distance as in the past - the daily distances will be shorter and the challenges will be different. We will be passing on the torch somewhat to our kids giving them the opportunity for more independence and to increasingly use the knowledge they have gained over the years. I am always pleasantly surprised that in this day and age where kids are bombarded by technology and social media, Rein and Silka never get bored on canoe trip. Rein is content to just drag a piece of driftwood in the water beside the boat imagining it to be the fastest speed boat out there while Silka paddles or paints. There are stretches of silence and idleness from them that we don't witness at home. Tom and I witness "imagination gone wild" every day.
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Day 3: Preparing dinner on
Spanish Lake |
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| Day 4: Bardney Lake |
Watches are a no-no on our trips. Without a time piece controlling our life, our natural clocks took over - we ate when we were hungry, we went to sleep when we were tired and we woke up with the morning sun.
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| Day 4: Gorp stop, Bardney Lake |
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| Day 4: Rein and Silka, Bardney Lake |
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| Day 4: Portaging to Mississagi Lake - stormy and lots of bugs! |
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| Day 4: Portaging to Mississagi Lake- a break from the rain |
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| Day 5: Missaugi Lake |
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| Day 6: Shanguish Lake - checking the route for the day |
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| Day 6: Tom runs the first rapid of the day |
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| Day 6 - Upper Bark Lake: Drying out after big dump in rapids |
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| Day 6: lunch break |
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| Day 6: Silka dancing hip hop to Tom's riff |
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| Day 6: Awesome sunset # 1 |
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| Day 7: Making faces in the morning |
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| Day 7: Rest Day - Silka playing some guitar |
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| Day 7: Campsite fun |
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| Day 8: Crystal clear reflections on Upper Bark Lake |
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| Day 7: Tending to the fire |
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| Day 8: Upper Bark Lake just before pack-up |
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| Day 8: Getting "mouth"-y on Middle Bark Lake |
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| Day 8: Camp-site set up, Middle Bark Lake |
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| Day 9: Morning paddle |
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| Day 9: Paddling to Bark Lake - Grey Owl country |
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| Day 9: First set of rapids on Mississagi River |
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| Day 9: Second set of rapids |
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| Day 9: Silka and mom, Hell's Gate Rapids |
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| Day 10: Silka taking down the tent |
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| Day 9: Hell's Gate Rapids from camp-site |
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| Day 10: Hell's Gate Rapids |
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| Day 10: Blueberry pancakes |
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| Day 10: scoping out some rapids |
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| Day 10: swimming in the rapids |
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| Day 10: Shawn and Julia arrive |
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| Day 10: Shawn and Julia join us at our lunch/swim spot |
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| Day 10: Tom's lasagna dinner - yum! |
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| Day 10: playing music |
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| Day 10: Leslie in her evening anti-mosquito attire |
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| Day 11: 3rd day on Mississagi River |
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| Day 11: Shawn, Julia and Silka paddling through "The Maze" ahead of us |
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| Day 11: The Maze |
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| Day 11: "Jumping Rock" campsite |
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| Blueberry Bonanza!!! |
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| Day 11: Pumping water |
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| Day 11: cocktail hour and prepping for dinner |
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| Day 11: Pre-dinner music jam |
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| Day 11: Some post-dinner canoe frisbee |
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| Day 12: during pack up |
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| Day 12: Last section of Mississagi River before Rocky Island Lake |
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| Day 12: Julia checking out possible camp-site |
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| Day 12: Rein in Shawn and Julia's canoe |
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| Day 12: Paddling to Rocky Island Lake |
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| Day 12: Rocky Island camp-site |
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| Day 12: Awesome sunset # 2 |
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| Day 13 - Rest Day: Shore-line hike |
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| Day 13: Shoreline hike - lots of driftwood! |
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| Day 13: Lots of cool rock formations |
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| Day 13: Awesome sunset # 3 |
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| Day 14: kissing the "goat" |
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| Day 14: Kirby/Olvet, Schall/Savoie canoe trip team 2013 |
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| Day 14: S and J in the Kijik with the "goat" |
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| Day 14: lots more driftwood |
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| Day 14: Lunch stop |
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| Day 14: Old cabin structure at lunch spot |
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| Day 14: Shawn runs to top of cliffs |
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| Day 14: Paddling by cliffs on Rocky Island Lake |
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| Day 14: End of day beach play |
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| Day 14: relaxing after a long day of paddling |
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| Day 14: The Kirby-Olvet Clan |
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| Day 15: Early morning at the beach - everyone is still sleeping |
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| Day 15: Early morning fog |
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| Day 15: One last session of canoe frisbee |
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| Day 15: Shawn's balancing act |
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| Day 15: Heading towards our last portage of the trip, dam on Rocky Island Lake |
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| Day 15: Shawn, the bald eagle |
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| Day 15: Mirror, Mirror on the lake, is that two Shawn and Julias paddling on the lake? |
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| Day 15: Old massive logs at last portage |
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| Day 15: Out and enjoying our first soft drink in over two weeks |
Next year will be a different trip with two canoes - I am excited and a bit apprehensive about what this change will bring. We will not cover the same distance as in the past - the daily distances will be shorter and the challenges will be different. We will be passing on the torch somewhat to our kids giving them the opportunity for more independence and to increasingly use the knowledge they have gained over the years. I am always pleasantly surprised that in this day and age where kids are bombarded by technology and social media, Rein and Silka never get bored on canoe trip. Rein is content to just drag a piece of driftwood in the water beside the boat imagining it to be the fastest speed boat out there while Silka paddles or paints. There are stretches of silence and idleness from them that we don't witness at home. Tom and I witness "imagination gone wild" every day.
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