Thursday, August 10, 2017

A Canoeing Adventure

Two weeks ago we paddled the Robson Lakes, two small lakes with only a few cottages, so if you look the other direction you could convince yourself you're in northern Ontario!  But it's normally a pretty easy-going paddle, and not very long.  This time we made it into an adventure!

There's a wide creek draining down into the Robson Lakes, and we made this trip into an adventure by heading up the creek.  It added a lot of distance, and we felt like the early explorers, threading our way between fallen trees along a very wild waterway.

The lakes themselves are partly surrounded by wetland, which really does look like northern forest.

In the shallower spots there are large rafts of waterlilies, both white and yellow.

But once we headed up the creek we quickly realized that we had taken on a challenging paddle.  It was more like a slow wiggle among and between the fallen trees and branches.  We made it, quite a long distance, and the trip turned into 3 hours, and quite an adventure!

So a week later, we decided to go back, taking our bush saws, to try and trim up some of this route, enabling us to get through and go further up the creek.  I let my canoe buddy, who was feeling like a lumberjack that day, do most of the work!

This was the biggest group of logs we tackled, too big to saw through, but we moved them enough to slide the canoe through between the logs.

But a short distance further, we ran out of luck.  About three big logs overlapping each other crossed the entire creek.  We will have to go back with larger saws.  (And more snacks).

The highlight of the paddle for me was this pair of Cardinal Flowers, growing right out of one of the log jams.  Such a brilliant red.  And I sat and enjoyed them while the lumberjack worked!

So what would normally be an easy-going one hour paddle, turned into two 2-3 hours canoeing adventures.  And I don't expect we're finished yet.


13 comments:

  1. You have an adventurous spirit, FG!

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  2. What a good day this must have been!

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  4. Looks like a lovely day to be out paddling around. Good for you for trying to clear the path.

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  5. What a fun tour, brings back memories of our canoe tours in Algonquin park, love the scenic quiet wilderness.

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  6. Looks like a real adventure for sure! I thought it was you and Maria until you mentioned the lumberjack. I was going to give her a whole lot of credit!! I went on a canoe trip once, in another life, with 2 other couples down the Saugeen River. We were so loaded down that I wasn't enjoying it as I should have.

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  7. Hello, it is a beautiful place for kayaking. Having a lumberjack with you can be a great thing. Happy Friday, enjoy your weekend!

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  8. What fun! Nice to have a partner who likes to work while you take wonderful pictures. I hope you can move those logs so I can enjoy more paddling with you. Love that last picture, with the clouds reflecting in the water. :-)

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  9. I can sure see why you'd want to paddle that creek, and why you felt it was worth the effort to clear it. Happy paddling!

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  10. Great paddle where you took wonderful pictures.
    Wow the red cardinal flowers are so pretty. Never saw them before.

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  11. Beautiful looking stream, boreal forest and wetlands always enhance a canoe trip of any length.

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