This is our (Cherry, Honey, David and I) first canoe trip!!
David came to pick us up around 7:30 am on the Saturday morning… it was raining a bit just like the weather forecast said…
So off we got on the high way 401, then 400, then just keep on going north for a good 75 minutes or so. The further north we drove, the harder the rain became; the windshield wipers were pretty much wiping at full speed and we still couldn’t see the road very clearly with the pouring rain. We were worried about the trip going to be ruined, but the best things we could do were just pray and continue moving north…
We got to the McCrae Lake parking lot around 9:40 am; the rain finally stopped, so our hope index just shot right up. However, the rain made the trail all muddy and the water level, according to our guide Aaron, was the highest he had ever seen in the past 15 years he canoed there. We let the dogs off the car, off leash, and a good mud war in the puddle was just inevitable. Very quickly, other group members showed up with their dogs. 10 nice people and 10 nice dogs! After a brief group introduction, we were all equipped with life jackets (including the dogs) and given a paddle; we set off our canoe around 10:00 am. At first, Cherry and Honey didn’t know what to do in the wobbly canoe and wanted out…after struggling with them for a minute or two, we had to just let them go off in the water to save our own lives from almost tipped over canoe. Other dogs pretty much stayed in their canoes like a regular; and as you could’ve imagined, everyone was just waiting and watching us fighting with the dog and the canoe…lol. We eventually took off with David sitting in the front of the canoe, I sitting at the back, and the dogs swimming beside us. Very soon, Cherry and Honey realized that trying to catch up to the canoe by swimming in life jackets could be very tiring…so they started to swim toward the side of our canoe asking for help – wanted us to pull them back in. I exercised every muscle of mine and pulled 80lb wet dogs into the canoe from the water while trying to stabilize the canoe... Trust me, it wasn’t the easiest thing, but we did it! J (the guide helped us stabilized our canoe couple times too!)
Then we canoed to a small island, had some snack, then canoed a bit more, brute forced the canoe through some beaver dams, then had lunch, played some fetch. By the afternoon, the dogs were pretty tired, so they stayed in the canoe quietly with some occasional jumps left and right rocking the canoe just to freak me out. Due to the high water level that was brought by the pouring rain in the morning, the water current was pretty strong too, so we had to cut our itinerary a bit shorter and ended this exciting day around 3:30pm. By the time we got back to Toronto, it was around 5:45 pm… we were exhausted! Mom took Cherry and Honey for showers first thing when we got home… and after that, Cherry and Honey pretty much slept their way through till the next morning!
Overall, it was a good trip, my non-water-proof camera survived, I survived, David survived, Cherry and Honey certainly had a great time. Great job team!
