We planned a 4 day and 3 nights canoe trip. Our route has taken us on circuit #10 - Jean-Pere. A 3h50 minute drive from Montreal took us to the Domaine. We setup and lunch and we were ready to leave the Domaine at 2pm. We were lucky to have to wind at all for our first ride. It was 26c. We missed the same entry that lead to our first camping site and ended up at another site #10-83 at 4h10pm. Pete was very excited and JS had to trow him over board to scare him so he would be calmer into the canoe. We saw 3 otters on our way over. It took 1h30 to setup kitchen and tent. The dinner that night a southern coucous was so so. JS tried to make a fire with wet wood and we did not have great success. We went to sleep at 8pm. The night was very hot. we had to sleep out of our sleeping bags onto our thermarest. I was very happy that we had taken Cliff advise and that I had made covers for the mattress. It rain that night. We have to mention that until the last morning, we may have seen 20 mosquitoes total. Also, I want to mention that we saw each day and early evening - an helicopter and hydro planes go by.

Bow of Canoe Packing Test Run

We had to install a keel strip and spray deck tie-downs on our canoe this week-end, so we took the occasion to try our canoe packing strategy. You can see some inflatable sections in the bow and stern -- these help with flotation in case the canoe flips over. Melanie, in the bow, has a dry box for her camera and misc stuff. The orange safety kit is located under her seat. Behind her is the 60L barrel with all the kitchen stuff, then a large backpack with sleeping bags, tent, and clothing. Pete sits behind this with me in the stern.

View the Canoe-Camping > 2006 > 20060804 - Packing the Canoe Test Run folder...