-woke up in the morning. Everyone is still asleep so I read a novel for awhile in my bunk and then dozed off. Everyone got up at 10:00.
-for breakfast I had two hot chocolate drinks and a granola bar. I complain to the other guys about my sore arm but don’t get much sympathy. I beg Dave to switch canoes even for just an hour just so I can switch arms. But Dave can only paddle on the left so he couldn’t switch.
-we pack up our gear and sweep out the cabin
-just as we are getting ready to leave the cabin, a guy in a motor boat comes to the dock and gets out and strolls around the grounds. Phil tells us to stay in mudroom at the side of the cabin so we just sit in there. The guy in the motor boat checks out the other cabins and then comes in our cabin through the front door and starts looking through the cupboards. We are all sitting still in the mud room. I am afraid to even breathe. Thoughts run through my mind like: Are we hiding? Who is this guy? What is he doing? What do we do if he comes out the side door and sees us all sitting here? Thankfully he left out the front door and got in his boat and left. It was extremely tense
-the resort/camp has a well so we can hand pump water from the well rather then having to filter lake water. Walt had shown me how to prime the pump the other day. So before we left I was going to fill my water bottle when I meet Dave coming back from the well and he asks me in his rough mafia voice “It's okay to use da water in da pitcher?”. He had filled his water bottles and made juice with the water to be used for priming the pump. I pour the remainder of my water into the pump but it is not enough to prime it. Now we don’t know what to do and we don’t want to tell Phil that we screwed up the pump. Dave wants to pour his juice in to prime the pump but I don’t think it is a good idea. Dave then goes to the showers and fills up the pitcher with untreated lake water and we use that to prime the pump and fill up the waterbottles. I hope we don’t get Girardia.
-we left the resort at around 12:30 pm. We don’t have lunch so I put a couple of granola bars in my pockets to get me through the day.
-we paddle up the Ogoki River. My arm is loosening up and I am doing okay. I concentrate on my paddling stroke. Phil jokes to the other guys that since I am such a great conversationalist he has been able to plan out most of next year's routes.
-Phil points out a spot where the natives used to meet to trade amongst themselves. He says if you kick around the dirt you can easily find ancient Indian artifacts. He once got a permit to bring some artifacts to an archeologist and he found some fragments of a bowl and a piece of copper
. The copper was from a tribe from Michigan.-we paddle to Ogoki Falls, see a beaver and unload the canoes at a huge rock. This is the spot where Phil thought we could camp if we didn’t get permission to stay at the resort. Phil phoned Investors Group using his satellite phone so he could transfer money into the chequing accoun
t to cover the monthly bill for the float plane-we do the 273m portage around Ogoki Falls. It is an easy portage. Phil points out some old blazes. To mark a portage trail the voyageurs would make an axe mark on the trees.
-we paddle to the next portage where the two parts of the Ogoki River meet. We have 2 choices: take the long portage (732 m) or take 2 short portages (100m each?). However, the short one requires us to paddle across some fast moving rapids to an
island in the middle of where the 2 parts of the Ogoki River meet. We paddle to an eddy and Phil gets out to scout the rapids. Walt, Dave & I think we won’t be able to make it across the rapids and will probably tip the canoes in meantime. Phil comes back after about 5 minutes and says we will take the long route and we all breathe a sigh of relief. I don’t think the “short” route would have saved much time because it involves 2 portage
s and it takes a bit of time to load and unload each canoe. But it would mean a lot less lugging of gear along the route. I think Phil just wanted to scout out the route on the island but after we told him that we were all afraid to take that route he will probably delete it from the map. We do a back ferry across the current to the takeout of the 732m portage. There are some outfitters boats blocking the takeout which annoys Phil.-we begin lugging gear across the portage. There are some downed trees blocking the trail which we have to hurdle over. Phil got out the chainsaw and began clearing the way. Other than the downed trees it was a fairly easy portag
e. There were tons of blueberries. Whenever I walk through the blueberry patches I think about running into bears and I noticed later that I stepped in some bear scat.
-I had a chance to wait by myself at the end of the portage and was thinking how neat it would be to find something left by the voyageurs so I started looking around and noticed a coin. Excitement ran through me as a I picked it up hoping for some valuable coin from the 1800's but it turned out to be a 1965 US dime. We loaded up Walt & Dave’s canoe while Phil phoned Mattice Outfitters to say we are running late and could they send their camp manager with a motor boat to pick us up.
-we paddle W
hitewater Lake for what seems quite a while and a little past Picnic Island (which is where a lot of fishermen from the outpost camps have a shore lunch of fish) Richard along with his dog Echo from the Whitewater Lake camp pick us up. Echo is a boxer so I am a little leery getting into the boat but she is very friendly. We take some time tying the canoes to the side of the boat and then we are on our way. During the boat ride it rained part of the time and it was cold. We saw a bald eagle, a rainbow and a beautiful sunset. The boat ride takes 2 hours and we get to the camp just in the last bit of daylight. The cabins of Whitewater Lake Camp are on beautiful white sand beaches that remind me of pictures of the tropics.-Richard brings some beer but only Walt likes beer. Richard fills us in on some of the current events of the past week
-we unpack our gear to try to dry everything out. Phil gets the woodstove going
-Phil cooks up supper on a real stove. We used up some of the extra food so we had a huge supper: beef stew, potatoes, green beans and meatballs. For dessert we had chocolat
e pudding cups and chocolate chip cookies. I love chocolate chip cookies and was surprised to find a package in the bottom of the food barrel. I wish I had found them earlier.-I take a luxurious hot shower
-I finish off the vodka I brought and we fill in our journals and chatted. We went to bed. I put earplugs in because Dave is a terrible snorer.
Favorite Phil Story:
-canoe guidebooks, websites and maps always have disclaimers on them. River conditions and portage routes can change with the weather, seasons or even from flooding from beaver dams.
-a couple had asked Phil for one of his maps of the Kopka River. After talking to them, Phil didn’t think they were experienced enough for a Kopka River trip. Phil said the maps were not complete and he didn’t want the liability so he didn’t give them one. The couple went anyways and missed a portage takeout and went through some rapids and were seriously hurt
3 comments:
Did you ever find out who that guy was that went through the cabins? Weird!
And thanks for that picture of the bear poo! :P
Sounded like another rough day. Glad I'm just reading about it. Except the sunset picture is beautiful and I could have suffered through a white-beached camp and chocolate chip cookies! Glad there was a happy ending. :)
Sounds like an other funfilled day on the river. You were luchy you met the bear scat instead of the bear. He did eat blueberries by the way.
You must have some arm on you now from all that paddeling.
I agree with Karen, who was that guy anyway? Did he carry a gun or something?
Again , beautifull pictures, thanks for sharing those with us Ray.
Only a guy would think to photograph poop! lol
So, you'll have to update all the loose ends, starting with the weird guy who you were hiding from. What kind of craziness was that? Or was Phil just outside slapping his knees laughing at the city boys cowering in the mudroom, havin' some fun withya??
(Cathy)
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