Sunday, July 31, 2016

Summer 2016 Day 27

We had a little bit of portage left for Sunday morning.  With a few more back and forths, we were on the water by eleven.  Richard hoped to see us off, helped us with some of the gear, and was only a little surprised by how long it took.
With all of our supplies, portaging took about five heavily laden trips, followed by packing the boats from scratch.  I took my shoes off at the end and threw them into the cockpit.  Ordinarily I would have put them in a hatch, but with such a late start I rushed past that.
We said goodbye to Richard and set out.  After twenty minutes, feeling around inside of my boat, I discovered I only had one shoe in there.  We paddled back to the put-in, and looked around for the missing shoe.  Richard came down from the tracks, he’d been waiting for his train.  He hadn’t seen my missing shoe.  I’d lost it.  Richard tried to give me his shoes.  I couldn’t accept.
Going forward I’d wear my booties.  When dry, they weren’t so bad with socks.
We put back in and headed up the river.  We paddled up a tiny first current with a push and past a sacred first nations island.
Then we got to the second set of rapids.  No matter how fiercely I sprinted, I could not climb up the falling water.  We got out, and carried our boats over some rocks on the right side of the river.
For the third, and final set, we saw the cliff that Richard told us to portage up.  At the top, as he described, stood a cross remembering the loggers who had tied in these rapids.
We tried paddling through the current to the cliff.  The force of a jet off a rock swung my bow into the main current, and in a moment, the river pinned me sideways, my bow against one rock and my stern against another.
With all my might, the strongest of strokes and the most dexterous of hip wiggles, I could not free myself.  When I tried too hard, the river scuked me down, and I skulled for my life and stayed upright.
Erin watched from a short distance up river.  Neither of us had any idea how she could help.
Without any other ideas coming to mind, I got out.  The current raged around me, but I held onto my boat, and found I could stand.  I pulled my boat free, and we convened on a beach a short distance downstream
We began searching through the woods for a path to portage to the base of the cliff.  We found some paths, that seemed to go in various directions, but they always turned into nothing.  A fire had rushed through the forest a few years earlier, and left all the trees burnt out husks, some ready to fall with the slightest push.  
The sun shined down, passed the dead branches, onto a field of fallen trunks and blueberry bushes.  As we walked and climbed through the maze of fallen trees, we snaked through an endless supply of blueberry deliciousness.
We didn’t find a path.  We returned to our boats.  The water had risen and they floated, tangled in fishing line, caught in water weeds. We ran toward them, and then began the arduous work of untangling them. We’d grown used to the slow, meticulous process of untangling the line.  It frequently caught on weeds and formed knots, and nothing could be done about it except cut it, though we didn’t have enough, or untangle it.
We put back in the water and headed upstream again.  When we got to the spot where I’d been pinned, we got out and pulled the boats up stream along the side.  The current soon became too strong and the water too deep.  We needed to pull the boats over rocks.  We tied one boat, and carried the other over.  Then worked together to get it to the bottom of the cliff where we tied it to more rocks.
After repeating the process with the second boat, sometimes chest deep as we scrambled up the river, we were ready to begin our ascent of the cliff.  First we double checked that the portage wasn’t on the bottom of the cliff.
We climbed the cliff and set up two ropes at the top.  One to climb, and one with a pulley for the boat.  We scouted out the top of the hill, and didn’t find the path.  But Richard told us it would be up there, and we found some good candidates to search more thoroughly in the morning.
At the top of the cliff we found a small ledge before boulders, brush, and more cliff.  It seemed like the portage started there, so we hauled everything up.  We did not find quite enough room to pitch the tent without fear of falling back down the cliff in the night, so we climbed the boulders to a field of blueberries, and pitched the tent on the bald top of the hill surrounded by blueberry breakfast.
With the river flailing below, and a view in every direction, we rested in the prettiest camp I’ve ever made.
Summer 2016 Day 27

Thursday, July 28, 2016

Summer 2016 Day 26

Our hosts from the night before told us there’d be good fishing beneath the rapids just ahead.  Our map showed multiple rough spots.  We’d have to portage and it would be a long one.  No roads, but train tracks did run through the wilderness beside the river.  If we couldn’t find a trail, we’d take the tracks, and try not to get hit by a train.
When we arrived, I paddled back and forth across the river beneath the lowest set of rapids trailing a line.  I didn’t catch any fish.  We found no sign of a portage on either side of the river.  Erin set out to search the left, and I the right.
My vision isn’t that bad without my glasses, but it’s not great either.  After climbing tree roots up a six foot vertical ledge, I set into the woods.  Moss spread out beneath the trees, over rotting logs and mounds, around pines and birch.  Fewer branches reached out where I stepped through the shade, more up above.  Islands of sunlight suggested I might find an abandoned road, or portage trail; animal tracks turned into nothing.
I hiked up along the river, away from it and back.  When satisfied that the portage must be on the other side, I got back in my boat and met Erin returning to hers.  She too found nothing.  She didn’t even find the train tracks, which the map said should be there.
We set into the woods together to find the train tracks.  We climbed a steep hill, hands pulled at trees and feet dug into moss and earth, or looked for secure perches to push off of.  From the top, we climbed down to a gully, then up again and through the woods.  The tracks lay only 100 meters from the river, but through a strange wilderness, it was a long way.
We walked north west  along the tracks.  Walking on train tracks is hard.  We had to change our gates to match the planks, or balance on the rails.  We searched for a path down to the water, anything to suggest that the canoeists we’d met coming down the river had portaged this way.
A train’s whistle howled in the distance.  We climbed off the track and waited.   And waited.  The rumbling grew closer; finally, it passed.  We climbed back down to the tracks and continued.  After a time, without any sense of how far we’d come, we headed back to the river to see if we’d passed the rough section.  We found more rapids and a strong current.  Nothing we could paddle up.  We hiked up and down the edge of the river before returning to the tracks.
Feeling a little hopeless, we continued west.  A bear lay in the tracks up ahead.
From our distance, we waved and yelled, raising our hands above our heads to shoo it off.  It stood, looked at us from its sunny resting place, and did not shoo.
We returned to our boats to look for a portage trail again on the other side of the river.
Erin found it.  A band of orange tape hung from a half fallen branch.  A barely discernable trail lay underneath.  We followed it.  Sometimes the trail blazed clearly.  Other times, we got lost, and then more lost, before finding it again.  The trail took us through thickly clustered pines, from which we could barely defend our faces.  It took us over several streams.  One had an old log bridge, another we stepped through.  Then, it became clear, beautiful, and well maintained.  The upper half, around the worst rapids, had seen regular use.  The lower half, around rapids one could paddle down but not up, lay abandoned.
Where the old trail and the new trail met, a third led away from the water into the woods.  Not far in, we found a cabin.  The door stuck, nailed shut, the windows boarded over.  A phone number had been written on the wall.  We couldn’t call it without reception, or for that matter, with a phone that didn’t work in Canada.
Beside the small cabin stood a work shack.  Rope hung from rafters beneath the sheet metal ceiling, and a pack frame hung from a nail on the wall.  The Vietnam military-era frame met  our portage needs perfectly.
We hiked back to the boats, tied to a root floating on the water, losing the trail a few times, and continued east to look for a place we could take them out of the water.  We chose a site where a small stream cut across the path and through the stubby waterside cliff.
We took our boats out, and began the portage to the nice trail, half the distance to the put-in under the railroad bridge.  Erin balanced the duffle bag on her head, because she’d seen people doing it in India and thought it a good way to carry things.  I had the pack frame on my back, heavy with as many dry bags as we could tie to it.  The rough straps dug into my shoulders.
With an additional bag in each hand, and Erin’s occupied with the duffel, nothing protected our faces from the tightly packed pines that tore at our cheeks and slapped at our eyes.
Eventually, we again found the nice trail, and at its beginning, a pretty little beach with a fire pit. By the time we’d arrived, with exactly the gear we needed to make camp, our day had ended.  We’d finish the portage tomorrow.
Resting beside our beach campfire, the rapids poured in front of us, and the air flowed with life.
Summer 2016 Day 26

The next morning we scouted the trail into the forest.  Farther back we found a second shack with tarp walls protecting sealed plastic blue barrels.  Our trek into the woods eroded our hope with doubt.  We didn’t know what we might find around the next corner, but hoped it would be good.  The blue barrels didn’t quite make the cut.
Back along the river, after crossing a few more streams, we found another campsite on a stone beach besides the biggest rapids yet.  A couple of fresh lemons, and an egg in the middle on a frying pan lay beside a grill.  Firewood sat under a plastic tarp.  The camper was nowhere to be found.  Farther up, we discovered the put-in beneath a railroad bridge.
We then went back down the bad trail, parts of it always new, parts of it always the same, and resumed our portage.  After our first run we met Richard.  He liked to spend the summer along the trail, and was largely responsible for its beautiful maintenance. He’d spent so much time alone lately, that he was as happy to meet us as we were him.
He helped us with our portage by lugging gear, and when we finished, just before the end of the day, he gave me a fishing lesson on a shelf, shallow in the deep rapids.
Over the Sabbath, he shared his food with us and told us a lot about the river up ahead, which he’d canoed extensively.
  • He said that at the next set of rapids, we’d have to climb a rock cliff to find the portage trail.
  • Losing our water filter was the best thing that could happen to us because all the water up there was great for drinking.
  • At the beginning and end of each portage, we’d find a birch tree stripped of its bark.  The natives did that in memory of the old birch canoes they used to paddle.  They’d strip the trees to repair their boats.
  • We could wave down a train on the side of the tracks and they’d stop for us.  That’s how he came and went from his semi permanent camp site.
  • We’d have to ask permission to enter the First Nations’ villages up ahead.  But once we did, they’d be super welcoming.  We’d just have to ignore the adicts.
  • He would give us whatever logistical help he could, including his hospitality in Montreal, at the end of our trip.



Summer 2016 Day 26b

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Summer 2016 Day 25

Ahead, the river poured over a ledge and dropped down to our level and the current rushed toward us.  By sticking close to the side we inched close enough to the short fall, then got out and climbed up rocks near the edge.  Between them, we pulled our boats, gear and all, up a fast stream, jetting between the rocks, not quite deep enough to keep us from scraping our hulls.
A hundred meter paddle past the rapid, just before the Windigo Dam, a big blue sign said, “portage ici.”  We took out at the boat ramp and began carrying the boat and gear along the dirt road up the hill.  Nobody was about, and we stopped frequently for raspberry breaks.
Just after launching, under torrential rain, my line twitched and I pulled in a pike.  
It seemed as though our map had been made before Hydro Quebec built the dam.  The water flowed over islands marked on the map and into bays marked as valleys.
Without any settlements marked on our map for a long ways, we stopped to ask what lay ahead in Fergesen, a cluster of three or four houses with a dock.  A small ferry that took a handful of passengers up and down the river was disembarking, and the captain told us another village lay about ten kilometers ahead.
At the end of our day, we found it.  From the water, we only made out a few boats tied up on a small beach or to a crumbling, uneven dock.  But we heard music in the distance and saw a plume of smoke that suggested a fire.
We followed the sounds up the road.  Between two hills, six houses with enormous lawns spread out around dirt crossroads.  The only house in use welcomed us to drink beer and join their fire.   The family, on vacation, talked about their own fishing in the area and let us cook ours on their grill.  The mother asked us what we’d eat first when we returned home.
I said, “Salad.  We don’t really get to have salad on our trip.”  Erin agreed.  Our hosts made us a big salad.

Summer 2016 Day 25 S

Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Summer 2016 Day 24

We paddled on flat water for a long time.  We were tired and passed a house with a lawn.  Maybe we could stop there for the night.  A fishing boat sat anchored nearby.  Children swam around it.  We said hello, and the fishermen told us that Windigo, a small tourist settlement, was just around the next corner.

Around the corner we found a strong headwind and disgruntled water.  We crossed to the other side, and paddled beside a railroad track cutting the lake in two and sheltering us from the wind.  On our way back south at the end of our trip we would take the train on those tracks and remember the hard day we looked forward to ending.

And it did.  In Windigo we met a hotel owner who was happy to let us use her Wifi and showers.  No one else seemed to be using the place, and the shower was warm and cleansing.
Windigo did not have any way for us to resupply.  A generator powered the hotel.

Summer 2016 Day 24

Monday, July 25, 2016

Summer 2016 Day 23

One of the campers dropped us off at the top of the dam.  We piled our gear on a cluster of rocks and boulders beneath a ledge.  After carefully carrying the boats down to the water, we began the precarious work of loading them off of the rocks in the rain.  We packed our rain gear last, and launched.
A few houses looked out over the lake.  
At the top of the lake, we arrived at the Rapid Blanc Dam.  The nearest boat ramp left us with another long(1.5 kilometers) portage.
Scouting out the route, we passed an abandoned village of two story brick houses.  Beyond the village, we found lots of strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries beside the road.  Eventually, we arrived at the boat ramp.  Wheeling the boats along the rocky, muddy, road through the downpour didn’t seem like any fun at all, so when power plant employees passed us in a pickup truck we waved them to a stop.  
They explained that they weren’t allowed to help us move our boats and gear, but would anyway.  While the furnished and well maintained houses, abandoned in 1964 and now used by the electrical company, would not be good places for us to spend the night, a storage garage with outlets for our electronics and live in squirrels to spook us would be.  
Soon we were warm, dry, and our gear neatly ready to launch the next morning at the boat ramp.  Fresh wild strawberries are wonderful.

Summer 2016 Day 23

Sunday, July 24, 2016

Summer 2016 Day 22

Wer packed our gear for the kilometer portage, from camp above the climb, to the put in past the dam.
We hung our wet towel to dry as much as possible while we portaged.  Once we packed the towel, it would dry no more.
We started with one of the boats, then returned for a pile of gear.  A kilometer is a long distance to portage.
A pickup truck towing a motor boat came up the  forest road.  The driver and his wife talked with us in  French and maybe we understood.  He wanted  to help.  We threw our gear in the back thinking that we would meet him at the launch.  But after just a few feet the truck turned onto a small side road, U-turned,  and left us.
We ran after them!  The truck stopped. We climbed into the bed, returned to the rest of our gear, and loaded up. The driver had thought to get it for us.
Before we knew it, our long grueling portage was quick and easy. The truck had dropped us off and we were ready to launch. Except, we’d forgotten the towel.  We walked back, got the towel,  returned to our boats, and started our day’s paddle.
Our map showed a town to our right, but we saw only wilderness.  
But where another river met ours, we found a summer village, complete with children swimming near big inflated water toys.
The river narrowed, but the current never got so strong that we felt, near the edge, like we were struggling.
At the end of our day, tired, we  approached the Trenche Dam.  Folks waved to us from a motorboat.  We waved back.  They called out to us and waved a wooden canoe paddle in the air.  We approached.
Their boat didn’t work.  One of the younger folk in the party leaned way out over the bow and struck at the  water pitifully with the canoe paddle, making some splash but otherwise failing to move the boat forward.
I hooked my tow rope up to Erin’s boat and Erin hooked her’s to the motor boat.  Towing a motor boat is hard work. But before long, we’d brought it to shallow water and the vacationers were able to get out and push it toward a boat ramp.
We found a dock and took out.  Beneath the dam, and signs that said “”no camping” in French, we found a makeshift campground.  RVs spread out through the forest. We pitched our tent, joined a party, got our fish wrapped in tin foil and cooked on a grill with lemon, and had a fine evening. We learned the fish we’d been catching recently were pike.
One of our hosts had heard about us on the radio, and soon everyone treated us like heroes.

Summer 2016 Day 22

Friday, July 22, 2016

Summer 2016 Day 21

We began by using the lee of an island to cross the river below the current.  The dam loomed just ahead, tumultuous water pouring out of it.
On the other side, we met a friend of our night’s host who had a house on the water.  Besides giving us and our gear a ride over the dam, he gave us fresh chicken eggs from his chicken, which we got to pet, and vegetables from his garden.
Finding the launch north of the dam proved to be easier said than done.  The first trail we went down, toward the water, turned out to be long, full of strawberries, and a dead end.
We drove over a bridge, and found a short easy trail with raspberries on the other side.
I caught another one of the funky fish, which later I learned was a northern pike.  Having steeled myself against chickening out in a moment of panic, I plopped it in my boat and removed the hook without hesitation.
As we navigated between the islands of a lake, two fawns and a doe picked their way along the shore.
The current grew strong, and we couldn’t get up it.  We crossed and tried the other side of the current.  There too, it flowed too strong.  We tried along the shore, and failed.  
Erin and I had a fierce disagreement about whether or not a particular body of land was an island or a peninsula.  On inspection, Erin won.  Rightfully, she poked fun at me for it at every opportunity.  On the other side of the island that was not a peninsula, the current still flowed too strong.
The last time we’d hauled boats up the river, we’d decided, in retrospect, that it might have been easier with shoes.  We pulled over to the wooded shore, quickly failed to find an easy portage, put on our shoes and helmets, and then began our waste deep hike up the river.  Shoes did make it a lot easier.
Back in our boats, we arrived at Beaumont Dam.  Steep hills rose from the dammed gorge.  Just to the right were some rocks we could climb, so we tied up our boats and investigated the potential portage path.  At the top, we found an electric fence.  For safety reasons, we did not wiz on it.
We climbed back down, and tried a different spot. Hands gripping vegetation, we pulled ourselves up the incline, boats tied to and resting on the rocks below. We found the same fence, but this time with a path beside it.   The path led us to a  road and we explored the area around the dam.
In search of a take-out, we followed a path along the top of the gorge, but it kept on going when we were ready to turn around.
On the upriver side, well above the dam, we discovered a boat ramp.  To get there from a take- out below the dam would be a long haul, but along a paved road and then a dirt road, not too much trouble with our cart.
Walking back toward the spot where we came out of the woods, a car passed us.  We flagged it down and asked for directions to the portage take-out.  
The driver’s directions led us back to the path through the woods.  This time we followed the path farther, until we arrived at a clearing where we eventually made camp for the Sabbath.  At the edge, a the path led down the cliff.  We climbed down.  Rocks and earth slid out from under our feet.  At the bottom, we some rocks beneath a thick growth where we could take out, with a great deal of caution.  
Jet skiers cruised by on the river, and with them we hitchhiked back to our kayaks.  We’d left them on the rocks, but the water had risen and they floated.  Lucky thing we also tied them up.  We thanked the jet skiers and paddled down to the take-out.
With a pulley, rope, lots of treacherous climbs, and stops to munch on blueberries, we got everything to the clearing.
In LaTuque we’d bought cream cheese, olives, and other yummy things for the Sabbath.  Together with our catch, we ate delicious food and rested after a long week of paddling.



Summer 2016 Day 21

Thursday, July 21, 2016

Summer 2016 Day 20

While paddling around a bend in the river, framed by woods as far as the eye could see, a vicious tug yanked the fishing line.  I pulled it in, and let it out, pulled it in, and let it out.  The fish grew tired and I reeled it out of the water.  
It seemed a freak of nature snapping back and forth on the line in front of me.  It looked like the fish I’d seen in the Chambly Canal.  I was too scared to put the strange, large fish in my cockpit with me, snapping convulsively one more time, it escaped the line.  Erin made fun of me.
A tremendous current rushed out from La Tuque’s dam.  Some houses could be seen between the trees on the more gradual slope on the far side of the river.  The current parted around islands.  We didn’t see a portage, but a path wound down from some stairs on the cliff-like shore, so we parked and climbed, and found a backyard in the small town of La Tuque.  The owner of the backyard welcomed us with open arms.  He found an ancient pair of glasses that were close to my prescription, and gave us a ride to the supermarket.  We were welcome to set up our tent in his backyard.
We were not invited in to use the shower, the pool was ours to bathe in.  La Tuque, he told us, was the last edge of civilization.  North, we would only find First Nations, and not for some time.
He called a friend of his who lived on the other side of the river to help with our portage the next day.



Summer 2016 Day 20

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Summer 2016 Day 19

In the morning, we were again swarmed by mosquitoes.  We launched quickly.
We had learned to search the map for especially narrow sections of the river.  There, the current was strongest, and we caught our third fish for the day.
We caught our fourth just before taking out at a beach for the evening.  A friendly family with a little boy came down to the beach as we prepared our dinner.  They pretended to believe our story, that we’d kayaked from New York, to be polite.
A road led up from the beach through the woods to a backyard.  The house, beside a large garden, resonated with the sounds of French spousal argument.  We knocked for quite a while before the elderly couple realized we were at the door.  They were happy to let us use their hose to resupply our drinking water.
We made camp in a tiny clearing beside the forest road.  

Summer 2016 Day 19

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Summer 2016 Day 18


Paddling along, as had happened many times before, the lure snagged on a stone or some weeds and we lost it.  But we found someone else's lost lure on a half submerged branch.  The new lure caught two fish, before we lost it, and then lost two more.
The day grew long as we continued our slow progress against the current.  Ready to stop, we asked some fishermen on a dock beneath a house in the woods if we could make camp on their lawn.  They were only renting the house for a few days and wouldn’t give us permission.  
Not long after, we found a dirt boat ramp leading off the water and pulled up.  Small cottages spread through the woods above.  Campers rented them for the week, and one brought us to the reception office, about a mile away, where we learned that we would not be allowed to camp by the boat ramp for the night.
We set our tent up at the edge of the woods and hoped the receptionist wouldn’t come out that way.  She didn’t.
We made it a policy never to eat in the tent, lest the smell of food convince them that our brightly colored tent was little more than a candy bar wrapper.  By the time we sat to eat our fish dinner, the mosquitoes were on us.  We applied lots of repellent.  It helped, but not enough.  Worst super-tasty dinner ever. Still, better to be eaten by mosquitoes than bears.



Summer 2016 Day 17

Monday, July 18, 2016

Summer 2016 Day 17

With heavy rain forecast, we set out wearing our drysuits.  The river narrowed.  The current grew strong, and as we worked our way into the flow, my line caught on something.  I pulled it in, and it yanked against me.  It had somehow gotten tangled in another fishing line.  I cut it free, pulled it and found, caught on the hook, an enormous, one-eyed fish.
Before it could flip free, I had it in my cockpit and removed the hook from it’s mouth while Erin held it firmly.
During the process, we’d floated downstream and now worked our way back up, excited for the evening’s feast.  Five oncoming canoes cruised past us with the current.  They didn’t say hello.
Sweating from the effort, we stopped to take off our much too hot drysuits.  The forecasted storms  were brief, intermittent showers, and cooled us not at all.
Hours against the current, we found a dock.  Another bunch of canoeists sat and had lunch.  They’d paddled down from the Gouin reservoir that lay ahead of us.  The current wouldn’t get much stronger than where we were, but then again, we would find waterfalls upstream.  Their summer camp ran multi-week trips down the river.  They’d never heard of anyone going up it.
We got back on the water, but as we approached a bridge, the current grew so strong that I only barely got through a choke point, and Erin couldn’t, near the edge, or in the center.  Above, a storm approached from the north.  Who knew how much water it had let loose up stream.
We returned to the dock where we’d met the canoeists, now gone.  Above the dock a path led through the woods to a gas station and  a hotel.  The gas station threw me out because I was barefoot  The hotel gave us drinking water, but refused to let us set up camp on their ample property.
As the heavens unleashed watery fury, we sat on the hotel’s porch and drank hot fish soup, then gorged ourselves on the one-eyed monster. Bellies full, we made camp on a woodsy  lumpy spot just above the dock.

Summer 2016 Day 17

Sunday, July 17, 2016

Summer 2016 Day 16


Marlene, our hostess, wanted to help us in any way she could. She took us to a fishing store to replace our lost lures, only it was closed on Sundays.  We tried a second, and then a third.  The third store had an ice fishing rod, only a couple of feet long, and perfect for trolling a lure behind the kayak.  The mechanical settings made it far more suitable than our plastic donut.
By the time we arrived at the dock, the day had warmed and I  wore my hat as we packed the boats.  Since we were only packing and not paddling, there was no need to tie my glasses on yet.  Finally, we launched.  After I spent the sabbath talking technique and form with my hosts, I demonstrated a roll and came up without my glasses. I forgot to tie them on.
Since Marlene had spent so much time driving us around, I didn’t want to impose on her to take me to get glasses after losing them like a dope.  I also didn’t want to spend the rest of the trip without glasses.
After waving goodbye and fifteen minutes of paddling, we found a fellow walking down by a dock with a little girl and asked him about glasses.  He took us up to his English speaking family at their mansion.  His mother brought us lemonade while he called anywhere that might have glasses for me within a reasonable distance..  No luck–Optometrists were closed on Sundays.
We launched.  Motor boats zoomed about every which way and fish cowered in hiding, without so much as a tug on the line.  At first we passed country communities on either side of the river, but by the end of the day they had worn thin leaving a highway along the right side of the river and forest on the left.
We pulled up to the “Teepee Ranch,” which had lots of scarecrows and teepees.  I told the proprietor our story and asked how much it would cost to stay for the night in our tent and use their shower.
“No problem,”  he said.  Free was excellent.  He then showed us our options. We could stay in a teepee, a small cabin, or a nice cabin with a jacuzzi.  
Hmm, “How does pricing work?”  He showed us the pricing chart.  Free was a misunderstanding.
“Where can we pitch are tent for free?  We can’t really afford to stay here,” we asked.  He pointed across the street toward the river and explained something we didn’t really understand.  
We setup our tent across the street and began making dinner beside the highway.  Trucks zoomed by.  The proprietor came over and explained.  He hadn’t pointed across the street earlier, he had pointed across the river.  He suggested we make camp on the island across the river.
We’d unpacked our gear.  After dinner, we’d go to bed.  We weren’t about to get back into our boats and paddle across the river.
The proprietor told us the police patrolled the highway and we’d get a ticket.
We moved down to the dock.  The police wouldn’t see us there.  We couldn't pitch a tent, but unless it rained, we wouldn’t need to.  
His wife came down and talked with us.  She clearly felt guilty about our predicament.  Erin got permission to use the bathroom, and then we were on our own.  
The mosquitoes came.  The netting that we’d previously used when tentless no longer sufficiently protected us against the horde.  Somehow, though, we slept until the rain came.  Then we set up our tent in the dark, perhaps faster than anyone has ever set up a tent before.



Summer 2016 Day 16

Friday, July 15, 2016

Summer 2016 Day 15

Not far up from our launch we found big rapids.  Paddling up them would be impossible.  Mary, the night before, warned us that we’d find a popular local white water kayak hangout, and a portage.
The trail began at a dock on an island.  I scouted it out, lost the trail, and ended up bushwhacking to an obvious put-in.  From there, I followed the correct path back to our takeout.  The trail, often flat enough to use our kayak cart, was marred only by swarms of mosquitoes.
As we paddled beneath a cluster of suburban houses and a small party dining on their porch, Erin’s fishing line went taut.  “I caught a fish!” She yelled as she reeled it in.
One of the women eating above called back down to us “You caught a fish?”
The fish escaped.
As we got closer to the Grand Mere dam, the current picked up.  Passing under a final railroad bridge before Grand Mere took some effort, but we were rewarded with the sight of the boat launch. About 750 meters before the dam, we had a long portage ahead.  
We asked a jet skier if another ramp lay closer to the dam.  Nope.
We crossed the now wide river at a strong ferry angle against the current and took out.
After unloading our gear beside the ramp’s parking lot, we took the first boat up, then made a couple of trips with dry bags depositing our things at the top of a steep path from the road down to the water.  A car with roof racks passed us as we returned to our takeout to get the second boat.
The car came back.  The driver, a local kayaker who spoke no English, invited us to stay with her and her husband for the weekend.  While I didn’t understand her words, her hospitable smile was more than enough to make her intention clear.  
They had a shower, laundry machine, tools to fix our broken pot handle, and wine.



Summer 2016 Day 15

Thursday, July 14, 2016

Summer 2016 Day 14

One by one, we wheeled the kayaks up a steep road to the top of the dam where a locked fence blocked the new section of river.  A Hydro Qubec employee in a bright orange vest with the tiniest bit of English at his disposal opened the gate and told us to be careful not to get sucked into the turbines.  
He also warned us that danger lay ahead, just before the railroad bridge.  We need to paddle the third path from the right.  
As we neared the bridge the current picked up, approaching but not reaching what it had been the day before.  With some strong sprints we made it up the V current formed between the shore and an island, and then under the bridge.
After the bridge the current slowed and we crossed the wide river as storm clouds approached.  As we paddled past a dock with seaplanes tied to it, the heavens opened up and it poured.  We discussed taking out and finding shelter in the sea plane marina.  We could change into weather-appropriate clothing, but decided instead to continue.
We caught a fish, and talked about the tasty warm fish soup we’d make when we landed.
The rain subsided and the water calmed to glassy smooth as the river narrowed on either side around an island.
The dam in Shawnigan did not have an obvious take-out, so we paddled into a small bay with Hydro Quebec buildings on either side. There,two young ladies on a catwalk bridge above us called out that we couldn’t be there since we were beside an electrical dam, and that it was dangerous.
One of them showed us where we could land and told us we could take the road through the electrical plant, up the steep hill, to a dock on the other side, a kilometer or so from where we were.
I gutted the fish while Erin scouted the road to make sure that there really was a way through, then Erin got the soup started while I wheeled the first kayak through the plant and up the hill on our collapsible cart.  A man stopped me, but when I told him I had permission he let me go on my way.  I left my kayak just inside of the plant’s security fence at the top of the hill.  
On my way back down a different orange-suit stopped me, and began to interrogate me.  He asked me lots of questions, some of them recurring as though my story might change.  What was I doing there?  What was the name of the person who gave me permission?  Didn’t I know I was on private property.  Where were these kayaks I kept talking about?  Where was this other person who I readily admitted was also on Hydro Quebec’s private property.
I walked him back to the second boat and our gear spread out on the lawn waiting to be hauled up the hill.  He spoke to his supervisor on the phone and confirmed that we couldn’t be there.  He opened a small locked gate only a few yards from where we took out.  Behind it, a small, heavily overgrown dirt road cut steeply up the hill.
We would not be allowed to roll our boat up the smooth winding road.  We’d have to carry it up the hill in the woods.
A crew of orange suits now watched us haul our gear, soup in the pot, and final boat outside of the private property.  When I stepped off the wet grass to carry my gear toward the gate a slightly roundabout (maybe 5 feet longer?) drier way on the road, one of the new orange suits yelled at me.  He wouldn’t let me sneak into the plant again.
The original orange suit agreed to meet us at the top so we could get our kayak.  Once our gear was out, he locked the gate behind us and we began carrying our boat and gear through the woods up the steep hill, then retrieved our boat.
Exhausted from our repeated heavily-laden climbs, we sat on the grass and ate our soup, still hot.  The original orange suit showed up.  We had hoped we were done with him.  He told us that he wished things could have worked out differently and that held only done his job.
After our rest, we wheeled the boats down to the waterside park on the other side of the hill and made camp besides a public dock.  A whitewater paddler named Mary, walking her dog, recognized us from a post I’d put up on Facebook a month earlier.
She gave us a ride to a supermarket and let us charge our electrical gear in her house overnight.  The supermarket meant an extra nice dinner, with premade pasta sauce, extra cheese, and canned chickpeas.



Summer 2016 Day 14