Temagami 7 Day Canoe Trip - Part 1

Grouchy Version

Ok, it had its nice points - scenery, wildlife, blah, blah.  But this is a grouchy blog, and here I am.  Also I just got back.

So, it was conspired that we would go on this 7 day trip up in the freezy North, instead of sitting in nice warm weather drinking beer on the dock.  You might detect which way I was leaning.

Now, we go because we have these super-canoeist friends.  The most important thing was to beat back their plans - "Don't you think 40 km paddling and 10 portages is a bit much for a day?".  We beat down and beat down some more.  Still, I was worried for old Cindy the Wonder Dog, and was contemplating bringing a big shovel, just in case.

We haven't done this in 8 years, and I still have the old-school Kevlar canoe, while the eager-beavers have a fancy carbon-fiber canoe (10 lbs lighter!).  So we went to the canoe store to buy carbon paddles!  Just don't look at any prices and trust your card in those places!

This is important for later.  I brought my fishing rod.  It's a 20 year old spin-cast, with 8 lb test, but folds up  small.  The drag is too stiff.

It's a long bloody drive up there!  North of North Bay.  Polar bear country!  (didn't see any!).  But, man, you can really tell when you reach Tony Clement's riding - they are making highway 11 better than anywhere along it's length.  They are blasting right through mountains, and I've never seen such blasting cliffs (hope they are stable, Tony!)

So, it's paddling time, and somebody has packed twice as much food as we need, just to give us more exercise.  As well, the toilet paper got mixed up, and we ended up with 1 roll, and rationing!

So, for my geology fans, there appears to be a lot of mining claim excitement up there.  Maybe it's copper, but it's Archean rock, and could be diamonds.  We were pumped up that the first portage was impossible to find, and they kept missing it in previous years.  So, very close to where we thought it was, there was this lovely pink survey tape.  "Oh look!  Somebody is nice to us!"  The stupid path went straight up a hill, so we thought we would look at it.  It went in generally the right direction, but was like Viet Nam movies!  Finally, I saw a g-dam mining claim disk!  I still couldn't stop the group, who were like zombies!  I whined and whined and they finally stopped.  We eventually recovered, intersected the real portage, and found the totally invisible portage start.  Dang prospectors!  I hope they lose their shirt!

-to be continued