La Verendrye Canoe Trip

OK, so this has nothing really to do with clay. But, the title of my blog is Simple Inspirations and a lot of where I get my joy and muse from comes from the outdoors.

We just got back from a five day canoe trip in La Verendrye Reserve in Quebec. This year we did Circuit 16 which is 86 km of canoeing and 5 km of portaging. It's our second but not last trip to La Verendrye and we'll continue to try different routes through this park.

It was a beautiful trip and the weather generally cooperated. We only had a few hours of headwind to fuss with and one afternoon and evening of rain. We always had a sunset or sunrise and the moon was full in the evenings (though we were hardly ever up to see it).

The portages weren't too bad, even the 1.1 km portage wasn't as bad as I was afraid of (though I didn't like seeing the fresh bear tracks on that portage). The hardest part was often trying to figure out how to land or take off from the portages since peat-bog-muck-sink-up-to-your-knees seems to be common at several of the portages.

More loons than people, several bald eagles, a few otters, some bold red squirrels who flung pinecones at us, but no bears (thank goodness) or moose (disappointing). If you look close at the photo below you can see the baby rabbit huddled in the corner. He didn't seem to be too concerned about us and would only gently patter away if we got within a foot or two.