Captain's log, day number 10 paddling from Dog Rapids to Pelican Narrows:
It's my birthday today! Happy birthday, Dave. Bill and Dave were up this morning with me and wished me a happy birthday. We had porridge and coffee and told some more stories at the campfire. Unfortunately, today Bill Jeffery had to head back as he is expecting some friends from Prince Albert. I was sad I wasn't able to spend more time with him. I was a little late getting to the river up to the highway where he was waiting for me. Anyhow, we'll see him again. It was a good day on the river and we got to spend the evening together and have breakfast with him. We got Bill packed up and sent him off and then Dave and I got packed up. It was a beautiful morning. It was calm, sunny and no smoke, which was nice. Dog Rapids is in front of our campsite and it was beautiful scenery to sit on the rock and drink coffee, watch the pelicans swimming around, and hear some of the loons calling.
First thing we had to portage Dog Rapids, which have a bit of a log roller system. They don't really roll, I guess. So basically they have kind of stringer logs across big beam logs and they did this for dragging their fishing boats over, but we're able to use it to pull our canoes over. We still had to unload our canoes to do it, but it was short. Only like 50 yards, but it's always a pain in the butt to unload all your gear. Especially in my canoe/kayak because I have to organize everything so tightly to get everything to fit, but I’m getting used to it.
After that we crossed Cornielle Lake, where the wind was first against us, but it was a short little distance of about five kilometers and then the wind was at our backs. Then we paddled about 10 kilometers on Cornielle Lake. There was one small set of rapids we had to line around but it wasn't too bad. It was only about a couple 100 yards. Taiga was very good. He stayed in the boat like he did when I lined around Snake Rapids, which is excellent to see. And then we got to Cornielle Rapids, which was about 800 yards. Again, it had a log system but I ended up not using them because they’re kind of hard to step in between and keep pulling. So I just ended up carrying my canoe and all the rest of my gear and that worked out fine. It took us about an hour to get across. Oh! And then I broke my fishing rod, which is kind of annoying. I had my fishing rod pack on top of one of my other packs and when I went to lift up my pack the rod snagged on another pack and broke it in half so I need to get myself another fishing rod when I'm in Pelican. That's okay.
Then there was a nice little channel into Mirond Lake. Mirond is very beautiful. It's a big lake, but it's got some really pretty sections where it wasn't burned. The wind actually was starting to get us so we got onto the leeward shore so that protected us from the wind. We stopped about a quarter of the way across Mirond and had lunch on a rock. We had peanuts and a tin of tuna on a taco wrap and then some jujubes and that was lunch. After lunch I went for a swim and Dave had a nap. Then we carried on and then we had to cross a fairly big part of the lake. We stayed close to the south southwest shore, but again, the wind was a little bit at our side, and Dave has a bigger canoe that he's paddling.
He has a 16 foot prospector ABS canoe, which is a little harder to paddle, so the wind was catching him a little bit more, so I would let him catch up by getting behind some of the islands. Mine is a nice sleek, low canoe, kind of like more of a kayak than a canoe, so it handles well in the wind.
Taiga falls asleep on the pack behind me. He's got a spot. He likes to sit on the packs and just lay in the sun and drag his tail in the water. He seems to be enjoying that.
We had to do, well, 15 kilometers across Mirond actually turned out to be a little more like 20 kilometers and we wanted to get across by the end of the day. We didn't want to have the wind come up and not be able to get across Mirond, which now, this morning as I'm recording this, the wind is picking up so it's a good thing we did get across!
Now we’ve only got a few clicks to get into town and we have people waiting for us. They are excited. They're even talking to me on Facebook. Oh, I am in cell range now. So I was able to make a few phone calls. I talked to my wife and she was very happy to hear from me. I was able to talk to a few other people and they're excited that things are going well. I had a very good birthday. It was nice to spend it on the water and for sure we're blessed that the wind behaved for us. The Lord was looking after us.
We'll talk to you later.
Over