Here is the log of the trip that three Pathfinders from Orleans, 6 Pathfinders from Kitchener-Waterloo, two Guiders and one LifeGuard did in July of this year. It was a lot of work, both to plan and to execute and was worth every minute of it. It is, however, very, very long!
I was very proud of the girls for the way they pulled together and completed the trip, through unexpected weather. We completed the entire 94.5 kilometer trip (roughly 62 miles) in 5 days - from Smith's Falls to downtown Ottawa. Because it is my log you will probably find it very egocentric - I may try to rewrite it as more of a story. I'm glad again, that Robin invited my Pathfinders and myself to go. As I did not have my Canoe Trip Leader's Certificate finished until the last night I would not have been able to take my girls out for this kind of trip this year.
July 7th - Tuesday: Kimberly, Lisa and Leslie stayed up here till 11:30 last night finishing the grocery shopping, packing up the food and organizing themselves. They have decided to pack the food in the two barrels that I have, by meal and by day. I tried to talk them out of it, to see what they would say, and then agreed that they had reasoned it out very well. So far, so good. We left the house around 1:30, picking up Leslie’s water bottle and then Lisa (Kimberly and Leslie had made the Survival Logs and the Banana Oat Energy Bars - and had left them in the fridge, so we had to return to the house for them.) We left the house the second time at 2:30. Went to the Hershey’s Factory in Smith’s Falls after checking to make sure that everyone else had arrived at the Lock (they had, and they were at the factory when we got there.) Barry dropped us and our things off at 5, and we got the site set up. Tom, Robin and Jana set up a tarp over the table, since it looked like it would rain at any moment.
Dinner was Chicken a la King, served over English Muffins. Dehydrated peas and dried peas are not the same thing. Mushrooms would have been a wonderful addition to the meal, but it was delicious none the less. Nancy Harris and Carole Roberts, Pathfinder Guiders from Merrickville came by with one Pathfinder (Natalie, I think) to visit for an hour. They brought jello jigglers for dessert. We ate quite late (as the dried peas were not interested in rehydrating quickly). Bed time was 10pm. The bridge makes a fair amount of noise when anything goes over it - and there is a train track not 50 meters away from the camp site. The train blows its whistle when it goes by. I don’t think I heard it more than once or twice. Jana is a mosquito killer par excellence!!
July 8, Wednesday: Got up at 7 - managed to eat, (Quaker hot cereal, powdered milk, tang and coffee), take down, pack up and get into the lock at 9:30. Good thing that we had taken the time to talk about how the lock worked from the standpoint of the canoe going through it the evening before!! Almost made it to Edmond’s Locks when the thunder and lightning started up. The lock was closing as we got there, so we spent an hour and a half inside waiting for the storm to pass. Robin had assigned canoe pairs and I had Andrea; Kimberly (not impressed to be sterning!) had Suzanne; Michelle had Kylie; Lisa had Emily; Leslie had Melissa and Robin has Jana - our life guard. Jana has only been in a canoe twice before, so Robin taught her the ropes that morning. Lisa and Emily were both too small to be together. We ate our lunch, really late, at Kilmarnack Lock and then locked through. We switched partners around trying for a mix that would work. Leslie, Kimberly and Michelle stayed with their partners. I took Lisa, Jana took Andrea, and Robin took Emily. This was a mistake as well. Andrea is too powerful and not skilled enough for Jana, and Jana is too small and not practised enough to manage to control Andrea’s strength. Lisa was willing to switch with Andrea. At someone’s private dock we carefully traded Lisa and Andrea. Andrea and I are the fastest canoeists in the group. At 6:45 we realize that we are not going to make it to Merrickville as a group by 7:30 - which is when the lock station staff are finished for the day. So Andrea and I dashed off ahead of the pack and arrived there at 7:38 (we had asked Kilmarnack Lock to call ahead for us) to find the Lock Master had waited for us with the washroom keys!! Wonderful! Leslie, Lisa and Kimberly (all working on their Bronze Duke of Edinburgh Award) put on Spaghetti for the rest. The mosquitos were ATROCIOUS! The worst that I have ever seen. The Kitchner-Waterloo girls set up tents, first leaving the one with the broken zipper for Kimberly and Lisa, and then leaving them one that was wet, and with the zipper wide open. Every mosquito on earth went in. I suggested that they finish everything that had to do outside the tent, go in, close the doors and kill them all. This was followed although not without some argument. My thermarest was wet, so I ended up using two garbage bags, one around the top half and one around the bottom. By the time we were in bed (probably around 10:30) I was so tired that I fell asleep immediately! Someone fell over the vestibule of our tent, pulling up a tent peg. I had not even heard it happen. Robin tried to find the tent peg in the dark, and finally gave up - she managed to push the vestibule’s material over the packs in there, and hooked the one tent peg that was still there onto its loop. Mosquitos took the opportunity to fly into the tent. Sigh.
July 9, Thursday: Woke near 7:30. Breakfast was fruit loops. It seems to take the girls longer and longer to get ready in the morning. Kimberly and I had time to walk over to the Canadian Recreational Canoe Association headquarters and pick up 13 Canada Canoe Challenge Medallions and Passports for the completion of our journey. It was 10:30 before we were ready to cycle through the locks. At Clowse Lock, where the water is reputed to be very good (accurately, I might add) many of the girls filled their water bottles, and I filled up the collapsible bottle for lunch. At Upper Nicholson’s we stopped for lunch. My gracious, it was pretty there. The Osprey flew by and one of the babies (Nancy said there were three, but we only saw one) popped her head up for us to see. While we were IN the lock the heavens opened up and we had another thunder and lightning storm - it was over very quickly, about 2 mintues, which we spent hiding under the bridge. Lower Nicholson’s (which we could see from Upper Nicholson’s) was ready as soon as we got there. At Burritt’s Rapids after we cycled through I went into the lock station to use the washroom, and lo and behold, there were Melissa’s Parents and brother. They will meet us at Rideau River Provincial Park - where they are camping too.
We put back into the water. Later in the afternoon Kylie was frightened by thunder and lightning in the distance, so we pulled off onto a gravel road. While we were off the water the wind started to blow and then the heavens opened up again. I think this is because I was nearly dry.... Sigh. We held up an orange tarp for shelter and it was a BIG help. We were not too far away from the bridge that is a kilometer away from the park. Robin got out her navigational charts, and we decided where we were (and we were surprisingly close - I think we had actually pointed out the buoy that we thought we were near), and we were about 2 kilometers from the bridge. When the wind died down, the rain and lightning receded, we put back into the water. Kylie was in the canoe with Robin, and Emily became Michelle’s partner.
When we arrived at Rideau River Provincial Park the Welsh’s were waiting for us. There is only space to take out 2 canoes at a time at the canoe site where we were to spend the night. We were SOAKED. I managed to get the Shepherd’s Pie undehydrated and made, as well as the tent set up. Mrs. Welsh drove the girls (in small groups) over to the showers. The girls dried some of their wet things at the laundrymat [I’d like to make note here that NO ONE had anything that got wet after that - not in their packs] Robin and I walked over to the shower at 9:30. When we came out it was raining AGAIN. The last pair of dry pants that I had with me got WET - at least I had my rain coat on. The Shepherd’s Pie was delicious, despite the fact that it was wet. Jana had made a nice fire, and I had put the pot on the grate to simmer - it worked wonderfully! We put the dirty dishes (everyone else had eaten) and the food that did not end up locked into the Welsh’s car, in the boys washroom. We were in bed at 11 - with the rain pattering on the tent fly.
July 10, Friday: Woke at 7:25. Sunny!! This is the THIRD morning that we have been told that the weather is going to be GORGEOUS. I NO LONGER BELIEVE!! By the time we were up, dressed, packed, yesterday’s dishes washed, breakfast (hiker’s cereal - nummy!) made and eaten, dishes rewashed, tents struck, and sun dried slightly, piles per canoe made and then each canoe separately loaded and launched, it was 11:30 by the time we were on the water. My air mattress and thermarest chair are dry - next my sneakers!!! Stopped at Baxter’s Conservation Area for lunch. There was a short rain squall before we arrived. Just enough to warn us. Andrea and I saw a turtle. There was quite a bit of wind in the open part of the river. Head winds made the trip to Kars really unpleasant. Finally Andrea and I tethered our canoe to Lisa and Jana’s and helped them keep up. This means that Andrea and I who were ahead were held back to the pace of the majority, and Lisa and Jana who were lagging behind, were helped to keep up. We stopped at the Kars Public Wharf and I walked into Kars and called from a pay phone to let Manotick (Long Island Locks) know that we were going to arrive after they were closed. They said they would leave the washrooms unlocked for us. It was 6 pm then. At 7:20 we stopped at the Hurst Marina to use the washroom. We had managed to go about 1½ kilometers in an hour. Peter Hurst, the owner of the gas station and marina offered us a patch of grass to set up on, behind the bathroom, and beyond a fence. The proprietor of the restaurant (Swan on the Rideau) fed us a free dinner!!! While we were unpacking the canoes we had more rain - just because my sneakers were nearly dry, I suspect! (Leslie thought it was funny...) And then we had an absolutely gorgeous rain bow - we could see the whole bow, and a about half of a double rainbow above it. A couple of the girls were really homesick. Kimberly pretended to phone me - it was really funny. We got to bed quite early. Robin phoned her husband and found out that her Mother and Father in Law and her youngest daughter and nephew, had gone to the Long Island Locks looking for us and when we hadn’t arrived had called Tom to find out if he had heard anything - so she called them and told that that all was well. We had gone 13 kilometers out of the 27 that were scheduled for that day.
July 11, Saturday: This morning we decided that we needed to get underway much earlier. Jana was awake before 6 am, and she woke the girls up by 6:30. We were packed, had eaten, and we in the water by 9 am. Two of the girls have stomach aches, I suspect that a combination of camping, different water every night and the stress of knowing that we have to make up the 14 kilometers that we didn’t do yesterday is bothering some of the girls. Once we were in the water everyone seemed to feel better. The wind was much better. We arrived at Long Island Locks about 12:45, went through and then tied up and had lunch. Leslie found her little cloth wallet and took it up to the Locks to use the phone, and when she got there discovered that the wallet was missing. It had only had a toonie in it, and Leslie wasn’t disturbed by its loss. I asked the Lock Master to keep an eye out for it.
We continued on to Black Rapids Lock. It was lovely to arrive there before it was dark. We found a lovely spot to camp - and we were thinking about getting dinner ready when we saw someone having pizza delivered. We borrowed the Lock’s phone, the ad from the people who were enjoying their pizza and we ordered. Sigh, heaven. Joseph and Mary Bryant (Tom’s Mom and Dad) and Christine (Robin’s daughter) came out with watermellon for dessert. Melissa’s parents met us as well. We have decided to call Bruce Hawkins (owner of the canoes) in the morning and let him know where we will finally end up. Much as I would have liked to do the whole route, we had to be realistic about the weather - headwinds are just too strong for the girls to fight. Robin and I discussed portaging the canoes around the lock, so that we wouldn’t have to wait until they were ready to cycle through in the morning. Leslie and Kimberly helped me turn the canoes over and get things tidied up in the evening as it started to get dark - and the two of them helped me solo the canoes around the lock in the morning. I rewarded them with two lock pins that the station master gave me. I was very impressed with the work that they did.
And the decision was made to get everyone up early again the next morning. Robin reorganized her food and things, and her father in law took some of the things away with him. As well he would be back in the morning to take away the things that didn’t need to go with us, or on the train to Kitchner Waterloo.
July 12, Sunday: Jana woke us all up at 6 am. She has the most amazing time sense. We were packed, Grandpa had taken the extra stuff, breakfast was eaten, and we were on the water by 8:37. The younger girls were not a big help moving things, and I finally told everyone that I would be seriously annoyed if we were not ready to go before the first lock cycle, since the whole point of moving around the lock was to be on our way so that we didn’t have to waste any time waiting for the lock. In the rush I forgot to call Bruce.
Andrea and I hurried ahead of the others just before Hog’s Back, in hopes of getting Bruce on the phone, so that we could tell him we would be late. I called Barry as well. He said he would meet us at National Arts Center (NAC) around 12:30 - my best guestimate. I did NOT reach Bruce - although I left a message on his machine. And the Lock Master had a message for me, call Long Island Locks in Manotick. They have found Leslie’s wallet - they will forward it by fast boat to Hartwells Lock - I will pick it up later in the week. By the time I was done on the phone they were ready to load the lock, and the rest of the canoes were waiting at the front of the lock, so Andrea and I thanked the gent for the use of his phone and hustled back to pass our information on to the rest of the ladies. Leslie was glad to hear that her wallet had been found. I was secretly glad that we had not reached Bruce - we would have to finish the distance. The water was beautiful - calm, no wind, sunny skies - perfect canoeing weather. We cycled through the locks. I asked Lisa and Jana how they felt about paddling on their own - when there was any wind we tethered up - and they thought they were fine.
At Hartwells Lock Robin went in to phone Melissa’s Parents and her Father in Law. There would be 4 cars to carry the girls and their personal bags to the train station from NAC. Robin figured that they needed to reach the NAC by 1pm at the LATEST. Bruce found us at Hartwells, and said he would meet us at NAC as well. I was elated. Three girls gave Kylie some money to buy pins for them, since she was out of the canoe, and we were rafted together by some rocks.
So goes the Canoe Trip Log that I wrote after our trip. As you can see,
only three girls from the Orleans Pathfinders went. Only 12 girls including leaders
can go
When Robin got back we headed off for the final leg of our journey. We had
cycled through all the locks we were due to cycle all that was left was a
nice sunny trip through Ottawa’s Canal. It was beautiful. When the other
boats went by the wake was quite exciting - but it wasn’t even as busy as I
had thought (feared) it might be. Leslie and Melissa were first up to the
NAC - Bruce and Barry were waiting for us there. Andrea and I were a
minute or two behind Leslie’s canoe. It was a relief to be out of the
water, and to know that we had done it. The last of the canoes arrived at
12:45 - how's that for scheduling!!! Sorting of equipment took a few
minutes. Bruce loaded up his canoes and bailers, Barry and I loaded up the
three girls equipment, mine, 7 ropes and 6 bailers. A photo opportunity
was not passed up - hugs were passed around. I presented Jana with a
Rideau Canal Pin, and gave everyone their hard won medals and passports.
Robin handed out the crests that Nancy and Carole had given us from
Merrickville. I was SO glad that Robin had invited us to come.
Leslie put it very well, “It was more work than I thought it would be, and
I’m glad I did it!”
This trip also completed my 15 nights over 5 trips for the final
requirement of the Guide Canoe Trip Leader’s Certificate.
