tickling the waters of Maine, one more time...

[spider]

"Miles from nowhere, guess I'll take my time..."

5 nights/6 days paddling with Philippe, friend and fellow adventurer from Sherbrooke, Que

While I don't often post my fresh water trips here that often these days, I thought what the heck it was an excellent spring "pre-season" paddle to warm up for a Saguenay trip later this summer.

So of course 1st thing we wanted to be sure was the ability to paddle 6 days with a couple of portages thrown in and not tire or fall apart at the seams or suffer general pandemonium.

Snow...the access road to the launch at the northern end of Lake Richardson was clear, but the snow on either side was thick and deep in the woods...hmmm that did give us a little pause.

As it turned out that was the snowiest section we saw after that there were just a scattering of snow and ice as we did the circumnavigation of each of the lakes.

Though each day we would see an occasional fishing boat, we saw no other "persons a paddlin" and had the lakes to ourselves day and night. Well perhaps not all to ourselves..lot's of footprints of moose and other critters. Perfect set of bear tracks in the sand the morning after my friend said he heard dogs barking in the night..safe to say I asked several times if he was sure it was not a bear he heard.

Quite confident it was canine..with no houses for several miles I tend to opt for coyotes as the source of the sound..the bear..just passing through.

The weather was near perfect each day warm and sunny with No biting bugs yay !!

Though I don't carry a camera Philippe does and here are a a couple of photos he sent along, course with only 2 peeps I tend to get well photographed :-)

the "mirrored' picture does make for beautiful pictures, it does play with your head a bit and can make it difficult to maintain the horizon or stated anothe way.it makes it hard to tell what is up and what is inverted..

the campsite picture ..Philippe's small tent in the front...I got the jumbo version tent platform..quite ingenious in it's construction by unknow peoples...

the portage...combined trip 1st time through 5 trips..on the return 2 ...think we refined it a bit..

Edited May 11, 2013 by spider

[gyork]

Glad to see others enjoying the safaris on the bigger fresh-water lakes. Perfect time of the year to be reminded of what solitude (with a buddy) feels like.