Zach and Eleanor were game for an outing, so we loaded up the canoe and headed out.
It is definitely more work paddling without Zoe to help out in the bow. When we got to the good fishing spot, I realized I had left the fishing pole in the back of the Yukon. Doh! I tried a little more commando fishing, with the same results as last Saturday.
Since the weather was so awesome we pushed on towards Hot Hole Pond. We had to go up and over one beaver dam, but with the canoe so lightly loaded, it proved to be no big deal. Just on the other side of that dam, as we were entering the lake, we saw some Canada Geese. One of the honked at us for a while, then flew off with his two pals. I took a picture of them, but you need a magnifying glass to see them,
or in the alternative, click on the picture and zoom way in.
Hot Hole Pond was more thawed than I had expected, but the center of the lake was covered with some rotten slushy ice. It was weird. Most of it was the consistency of a slurpy, you could pick up handfulls of it, and poke your paddle through it, but other parts would also fracture in big plates a couple of inches thick. Here is a picture of us aboard the ice breaker.
It was pretty slow going for a while.
We paddled to one of the inlets that has what I consider to be a beautiful waterfall. It looks like something you would see in a Japanese garden. It is always worth the trip. It even smells great from the splashing water. If you look closely you can see a big tree growing on the top of a huge rock in the upper right portion of picture. Thats determination.
By the time we headed back, Zach was sunburned and ready to fall asleep, but it was a fun trip.
When we got home Squeezie tried to convince Joey that we had run aground on a clay bank, and I had told her to get out and push. She went on to tell Joey that she had protested that if she got out and pushed, she would get all wet, and that I had replied "thats O.K., you'll dry out," What an imagination that girl has!
She also told the girls that we had seen pirates, that they all had one eye and one leg, and that we shot them. I like the fact that in her mind, the best approach to a threat is pure naked aggression.
Well, Zoe and Emily were bummed out that the had missed out on the pirate battle, so when Saturday rolled around sunny and warm instead of 50 degrees and cloudy with stiff winds, we went out again.
This was our first trip of the year with four kids, and I was a little worried about if we would fit or not. I need to teach Zoe to steer this year so that next year she and Emily can be in their own canoe.
The first thing we saw was a birch stump that the beavers had chewed off, and it was soaking wet. My first thought was that a beaver had been chewing on it and had dripped water all over it, but the more I looked at it, i decided it must be sap running up from the roots. I still don't know what the real reason was, but it certainly caught our attention. Well, mine any way.
I did remember the fishing pole this time, and fairly quickly caught a pickerel in my favorite hot spot. The first time he hit the lure was three feet from the side of the canoe, and he made a big enough splash to get water on Eleanor and Zach and scare the crap out of Zoe and Emily. On the next cast we caught him. As I got him up to the canoe, Zach was screeching about how he wanted to go home, and he was trying to climb under Zoe's canoe seat, and I was trying to get the camera out, and the girls are looking over the side for a better look, threatening to capsize us, and then the fish shook off the hook. No picture.
Well, we didn't get skunked, but another 45 minutes of trying every trick in the book yielded no further results. The girls wanted to go to their favorite camping spot on Hot Hole Pond, so we paddled on down. It is probably 2 or 3 miles total from the parking spot to the lake.
The extra weight in the boat made it much more of a proposition getting it up and over the beaver dam. Zoe had to get out and help drag it up and over. (I helped too.)
This trip there were no geese, but we did see a loon. Again, its hard to see without extreme magnification, but try clicking on the pictures if you want to see the loon.
All the ice that was on the lake Thursday was melted on Saturday, except for a narrow shelf of ice on the south shore.
This picture also shows a pretty typical outfit for spring canoing. My wool pants tucked into my 16" tall bean hunting boots, a wool shirt and a hat. Pretty old school, and except for the UT baseball cap, wouldn't look noticeably out of place on Hot Hole Pond in 1915. I have my share of Patagonia fleece and breathable waterproof membrane shells, but the more time I spend in the Maine woods, the more I like wool. Last year I canoed for 3 days in late July wearing some wool calvary twill pants. That was a revelation. Wool gets the rap of being hot. It doesn't have to be. Look for something in a lighter weight, like a pair of pants from a tropical wool suit. Wool has the reputation for being scratchy, but it doesn't have to be. The tightly woven fabrics, like calvary twill or gabardine are quite smooth. What wool does accomplish is absorbing a ton of water without feeling cold, or wet or clammy. Wool also breathes. These are two things that synthetics are fairly poor at. Wool also is much better dealing with sparks. Anyway, I am a wool fan, and if you haven't checked out wool lately, you should.
The kids climbed around Camp Alpha for a while to stretch their legs. I took a picture of them on the rock.
I also had the video running on Zach, just in case something took place worthy of america's funniest home video, but it was all pretty uneventful. He does look funny walking towards the crevasse.
Here is the return trip from the island.
After we left I tried fishing in the tail waters of the waterfall. I have seen a couple of dozen trout here in years past, but saw none this time, and had no bites. I grew up fishing for trout in Utah, but have no idea where or how to catch them in Maine. It is a mystery I hope to solve at some point.
We did see a beaver lumber out of the willows and plop into the lake, but it happened so quick that most of the kids only saw the splash, and I didn't come close to getting a picture. Another sweet blog momement missed.
On the way back we were able to canoe right over the beaver dam that had proved to be such an obstacle on the way up.
When we were almost back to the truck we came upon a mallard drake. They are much more tame when duck season is closed and they aren't constantly getting shot at. Eleanor wanted to touch it.
Even when we got close enough to make it fly, it would only go 30 or 40 yards and plop down again. We followed it all the way back to the truck.
Once we were home I had Emily take a video of me unloading the canoe. Here it is:
Probably not that helpful, but I like it anyway.
Well it was just about perfect. No real wind, not too cool, not too hot, sunny, no bugs! Zach, if you're reading this 20 years from now, I'm sorry you were born one step away from being an albino, and that you have skin cancer from all your sunburns, but we had fun, right?
