Day 14, August 24, 2012 - Dalton Schaller

Today started like every other day except the guys’ tent woke up a little later. The reason for that was because we had breakfast made already and everything packed up. After finishing packing the canoes, the group got together to map out our route and we received a refresher course on map orientation from Jeff. Once finished with finding the bearings on the map we set out on another canoe trip. Along the way, there were some frustrations and people were getting upset. We might be getting to the storming stage, but then there are always people to lighten the mood. For example, we had the majority of an interesting sounding musical planned while we canoed. Having key characters like the old tree, played by someone who is apparently old yet still looks good; a river nymph, played by Zoe Saldana; and a lumber jack, played by John Goodman. There were also some smaller roles like the head grebe, played by Jeremy and a rock, played by Jeff. I definitely noticed that the whole process of creating the play kept some people in good spirits. After paddling for a while, we arrived at our third portage for the trip. It was a short and flat portage which was nice. However, getting started on the portage was a little muddy. It all got done pretty quickly though and we had a nice lunch break before finishing the trip. The next leg of the trip was a long one time wise. We spent a couple more hours paddling with the wind blowing and the boats running through some shallow water. It was all worth while when I witnessed a couple of really cool animals. First, there was a young bald eagle in an eagle nest and then in the same area I accomplished one of my animal sighting goals. There was a mother black bear with three cubs. I was really excited to be able to see a black bear in the wild. We spent a good 15 minutes there watching animals and then left to finish the paddle. It was a little harder to find the campsite than we thought it would be but once we got there it was nice. We unpacked the canoes and set up the tents upon arrival and then held debrief right after which gave everyone a good amount of free time to end the day. I’d say that is a pretty good way to end a hard day of canoeing. -Dalton Schaller