A friend asked me, "what do you *do* on all-girls trips?". I was tempted to play to the stereotype and paint a fantasy involving lots of chocolate and snuggling. But the reality is, we do the same thing we do on other trips - paddle, drink some beer, make some silly jokes, explore, hang out - albeit with perhaps a few more treats and of course some skinny dipping. That's pretty much what the five of us - Kasia, Elke, Christina, Carol and I - did on a weekend on Charles Inlet just north of Bayfield Inlet on Georgian Bay.
It was the weekend after the Thursday that the lights went out in Ontario. I, being the model of preparedness that I am, had not done any food shopping or put diesel in my car since that was Thursday evening's job. So, for me, it was a scramble, getting fuel on Friday morning and braving the survivalist mentality that had taken over the grocery store. All was well, and Christina and I took to the road at 11:00.
It was a good time to get out of southern Ontario, that's for sure - the humidity was through the roof, it was hot, and power was not restored everywhere. Definitely not on my block. I don't have air conditioning so not having power at home wasn't that big a deal, but not even being able to move the air in my hot, sticky apartment would have made me particularly cranky. I can't think of a better way to deal with a blackout than go camping - you won't even notice that anything is amiss that way.
We met Carol at White Squall, and started paddling soon after that. I had my heart set on a particular spot on the north channel of the Naiscoot, but rough water meant we had to stick to interior channels on this trip. Elke and Kasia kept a lookout for us, and escorted us to an alternate site that didn't require exposed paddling and was much closer to the put-in (I had overestimated the speed that we would be able to maintain - I'm so used to being the slow one that I assume my paddling speed is the speed a group goes...)
The spot we settled on was lovely - the biggest challenge was figuring out where to put my tent, since there were so many flat rocks. Even after I put it up, I changed my mind again, and decided to move closer to the kitchen (which was in a sheltered spot in the trees). As I wandered along with my tent, I heard the telltale buzz of a Massassauga rattlesnake and did a big leap backwards. Christina and Elke checked out the snake and I decided that where my tent had been was just fine thankyouverymuch, and moved back to my original spot.
Kasia picked a very exposed spot for her tent, and Carol made like a hermit and I couldn't even see her tent from mine, but all were happy with their new homes. We sat in the kitchen and cooked our dinners - Kasia ended up with a surplus of food and convinced Christina not to make hers, and Carol and I threw our supplies together. We washed it all down with supplies from the surprisingly well-stocked boat bar.
I slept great. But then, that's not exactly surprising given that I'd spent a large part of the previous night wandering the streets and parks of Guelph, fascinated by the blackouts and the great view of the Perseid meteor shower. I think everybody else was in a similar state, since none of us stirred from our tents until shortly before eight. Then, we sat in the already hot sun making our breakfasts (Kasia topped up my coffee, yum) and pumping water.
Despite the hazards of rattlesnakes and the ubiquitous poison ivy, I loved our site and wandered around barefoot. By ten, I was hot enough to go for a quick swim (I'd already had one when I first got up, to rinse away the stickiness from the previous day). But as soon as I got out of the water, it had started clouding over. Didn't matter, though, we were headed out for a paddle.
I was determined to go to the site that we had originally planned to stay at, and we paddled north to the main (north) channel of the Naiscoot. It took me a while, and Elke and I had different spots entered into our GPSes (mine turned out to be the right one), but I found the spot. It was as special as I remembered it. We had lunch there, and a nice long break.
Aaaaaahhhh... who needs electricity when you have bright red cardinal flowers, windswept white pines and flat rocks? We did listen to the radio from time to time, but reports of 2/3 power and rolling blackouts didn't mean a whole lot to us. The classic Georgian Bay scenery looked the same whether or not the TTC was running and there were line-ups at gas stations.
After lunch, we seemed to have various agendas. I really wanted to explore up the Naiscoot. Kasia wanted to go back to the site and paint. Christina was easy with whatever, but she was on her first kayak trip and the whole torso rotation thing hadn't yet clicked for her so she was working very hard to keep up. Elke seemed ambivalent, and Carol was in the mood for adventure. We decided to split up - Kasia got her workout in with my towing belt, giving Christina a boost on the way back to the site. Elke accompanied them, but from what I learned later dropped behind to take pictures (they kept in touch via FRS radio).
Carol and I embarked on our own adventure - we paddled up the Naiscoot. I wanted to check out the little creek (according to the map) that connected the north and middle channels of the river. Elke knew that it was not passable, but I wanted to see for myself. Carol and I used our GPSes to find it - we would have missed it otherwise, there was a marshy bit on the shore that we would never have noticed if we hadn't been looking for it.
Elke was right - it wasn't passable. That didn't, however, stop us from deciding to go down it anyway. After a tricky log at the beginning, it seemed okay. I found myself wishing I had a canoe paddle since the 220 cm kayak paddle was just too wide. I parked the paddle and reached behind me for half of my plastic spare paddle. This worked, but I found myself pushing off the mucky bottom more than paddling. It only made sense to grab the other half of the spare paddle and move forward as if I was skiing. Carol immediately did the same, and we kayak-skied our way along.
We did a quick liftover at a beaver dam, and soon came out in the middle channel. Unfortunately, it wasn't the wide-open expanse of water that I pictured from looking at the map. Nope, this was a shallow, marshy bit that had no obvious channel. We bashed our way through the reeds to the southwest corner of the wide bit, since the map indicated that the channel continued that way. I guessed wrong, and came to a very mucky stop that required getting out and dragging. Carol was luckier, and found the right channel.
It wasn't much of a channel, and the reed bashing continued. For variety, we did some scraping of the boats on rocks, and three or so more liftovers. Carol was concerned since we didn't pass the cottages on the map, and I concluded that the map was off by 100m or so, since my GPS placed us on land north of the channel. We did get a bit of a shock - after more than an hour of this slow progress, I checked my compass and saw that we were moving northwest. We definitely needed to be going southwest, and the only thing that would have us going northwest was a dead end with a lake in it. But this was 1.5 km away if I trusted both map and GPS, and I was dumbfounded - I'll take compass over GPS, and GPS over intuition, but this didn't make sense in any way.
Carol pointed out that we'd have to move if we were going to backtrack the whole way, but that was when we figured it out - we were coming up to Charles Inlet, and there is a little dead-end bay on the northwest of it. This was the only bit we could see, and thus we were moving northwest into it. The channel opened up on the southwest. The GPS was right. We were a 20 minute paddle from our site. Whew!
After some boat washing (without getting out of the boat - we dunked under and pulled ourselves up by the bow of the other boat) and some swimming, we got back to find Christina reading, Kasia painting and Elke crashed out in a cosy group looking out onto the Bay. Apparently, the site had been over-run by daytrippers, so I was glad we had missed that bit of excitement. Carol and I joined the group for a beer, and then it was time for the dinner extravaganza.
I had volunteered to make Saturday dinner for everybody - but my food bag was supremely disorganized due to the lightning quick grocery shop to get away from all the other people who needed to go grocery shopping the minute the grocery store got power again. I took on the little dictator role, and put everybody to work. Christina chopped her little heart out in the interest of cabbage salad, Carol provided extra snacks (and fought with her can opener) and then made guacamole and Kasia and Elke cooked up the quesadillas I assembled.
We had a great evening, even if both Kasia and I managed to spill food on ourselves. The clouds kept blowing in and out, going from threatening to merely cute in a matter of minutes. Since we'd put up Elke's tarp, though, we didn't get any rain (the only rain of the whole weekend all came down in an hour in the middle of the night on Friday. Apparently, there was a thunderstorm, but I only heard a minute's worth. I was sleeping).
The sunset was stunning, though we'd seen so much stunning beauty that day that perhaps we were a bit blase about it. Christina missed it altogether, she was busy gathering firewood and hauling it out to an existing firepit far away from the trees out on the rocks. She'd brought s'mores, and was determined that we would have them.
She did a good job - check out her happy blaze. The s'mores were delicious and provided some entertainment (Elke's carton of wine provided some more entertainment). We lounged around the firepit and watched the now clear sky - I saw shooting stars, and Christina could barely contain her excitement when she figured out that the big orange star was Mars. The Milky Way was another source of delight for her (the power never went out in Niagara Falls, so the undiluted view of the night sky was an even bigger novelty for her than it was for the rest of us).
Christina was hyper enough to stay up later than the rest of us - we crawled off to our respective tents as soon as the fire died down. She informed us in the morning that she watched the skies some more, and she was on a mission to chase away the noisy crickets that insisted on serenading us right outside our tents. All I knew was that it was morning very soon, and I went for a little walk as the sun came up.
A little walk that ended up at the kitchen, because I wanted some coffee... I made a cup, then sat on the rocks, and Kasia and I mulled over the world for a few minutes. Then back to the kitchen, and Kasia cranked up the espresso maker for both of our benefits. I was too lazy to get out the camping stove to make coffee during the blackout at home, but I would have walked miles for Kasia's espresso that morning!
And then it was time for some rather girly activities - since the site was so popular with daytrippers (we were very close to Bayfield Inlet) the skinny dipping part of the agenda had been neglected the day before. The daytrippers were not out yet, and Christina, Kasia and I busily made up for lost time...
Elke had hidden a geocache the day before while Carol and I were on our adventure, and like the little geo-geeks that we are, the two of us decided to go hunt for it. Elke gave us the coordinates and then let herself be entertained by our antics on the search.
I'm glad we found it - Elke would have enjoyed it entirely too much if we hadn't. Carol had the fanciest GPS, but it was also her very first cache find. Her GPS took us very close (my Magellan 315 is not a particularly great geocaching GPS - it does not have WAAS enabled, and it only goes down to 10m on the display). But I spotted the container before Carol did. Friends that we are, we dug through the goodies together.
And then, all too soon, it was over - Carol needed to get to town for a dinner, and Kasia and Elke wanted to get back too. I was outnumbered, and so, shortly before noon, we (reluctantly on my part) made our way back to the marina. A good little trip, we'll do it again next year - even if there is no blackout. Conserve electricity, go backcountry camping!