Day 14 - Jeff

Woke up and man did it look like rain, clouds were turning black as we were packing up our portable "home", we thought for sure we were getting rain today. Sprinkled for combined time of about 2-3 minutes, if that. Was a pain though, we put on our extremely hot paddle jackets, rain would stop, take off, rain start again, happened a couple of times, then no more rain for the rest of the paddle day.

Wind at our back again all day, other than Lake Couchiching, perfect weather the entire trip, Julie even enjoyed surfing waves today and it was a blast to see her enjoy them as much as I do.

In little town of Trent River noticed a guy on the peir waving and wearing a paddle jacket, turns out it's a couple (Brian and Rose) doing the same trip but in the opposite direction. Having just come down from Georgian Bay we don't envy what they have ahead, record current flow and prevailing wind in the face, they sounded like they were having a great trip all the same.

We swapped stories, waved goodbye and left our separate ways, us coming to the end of ours, them just starting, almost felt like turning around and doing another two weeks. Gave them a set of bumpers off our kayaks (Julie's) as it makes some of the takeouts on cement docks so much easier.

Brian, thanks for the heads up on the crazy shortcut under bridge, we decided to stay on the channel after hearing about your swimming adventure, hope the 12k headwind to Hastings wasn't too bad.

After 22k we reached Healey Falls, there is a nice resevoir between the two locks and a great place to camp, just got tent setup and bam, crazy rainfall, waited for a bit and then got in the tent, other than what we were wearing nothing got wet, my little tent is truly bullet proof. We had a little nap but didn't last long after rain stopped. so we got up to enjoy sun.

Don't get the luxury boat crowd sometimes, beautiful landscape and scenery, sitting in lawnchairs inches from the boat, facing the boat, huh? Whatcha lookin at dude, it's a boat, and you've seen it a million times, turn around.

Big bow rider shows up and out piles 6 very wet guys and all their camp gear, caught in the rain sucks. Four friends plus 2 young boys, we watch them spring into camp mode, setup tents, hang clothes line for wet stuff etc,

Spark up some conversation and they all just decided to throw their stuff in a boat and goto Georgian Bay and then back to Trenton, life's rough. They are from various parts of the USA but we knew they were American already because they don't know what "a timmies" is. Great conversations and we get an invite to the campfire.

We make dinner and at 9:15 the bugs come out and we race to tent with coffee to wait em out, 10 minutes later, sleeping. Guess our bodies our tired. Probably should have taken in all the cooking gear tho, wake up at 1230 to the sound of my stove heat sheild rattling in the wind, have to get up, arrrrggggg.

Back to sleep but we missed campfire.

Thanks Stan, Bill, Vinnie, "Whitey", Ben and Taylor. Have a great trip.