Day 27 - Tony Beyer

Today was the last day on the river, a rush of many emotions was coursing through us. It was a very bittersweet feeling, on one hand it was nice to get to our normal conveniences like toilet paper and a shower. On the other hand it was hard to leave the eternal beauty of the wilderness we've come 115 miles down the English River and we did it together. Its brought us close to one another and going back to civbilication is going to be tough, but we must adjust and use the lessons we learned out there and apply them in the front country.

So we set out from our majestic beach campsite at Ruby Island for a pretty easy six mile paddle to the marina where our white stallion like vans awaited us. My first thoughts were getting my iPod headphones in my ears and reflecting on the past 18 days while listening to good tunes, as I know others wanted to as well. We took a short drive to Ojibway Provincial Park to set up our front country tents. Little did we know the surprise that “Jeeves” (Jeff and grad. Student Steve) had in store for us, it was a dinner at a close by restaurant Knobby’s, right off the lake. The thought of eating food prepared by someone other then our ECOEE brethren was awesome. Also knowing we don’t have to clean the dishes was a treat.

We debriefed the entire 18 day expedition, expressing our favorite parts, lessons we learned and how to incorporate those into our daily lives. But now it’s a new section of our ECOEE journey and I look forward to the new places I’m going and who I’m going with. So I felt this quote is quite fitting, “I’ve been smiling lately, thinking about good things to come and I believe it could be something good has begun.”

-Tony Beyer