This is Part III of a trip diary which starts here.
Day 6: Thursday 9/11
Wednesday night was the only night of the trip I had any trouble sleeping, so Thursday morning I was happy to stay in bed for a while reading and continuing to watch the Billy Joel documentary (which is interesting, but really long!).
Jen, Béla, and I paddled the perimeter of Middle Saranac Lake, including poking down into the creek in the southwest corner of the lake to find Bartlett Carry, a portage trail which is the only way to connect between Middle and Upper Saranac lakes. We had done this portage in 2016 when we did a trip traversing the Saranac Lakes. In the process we managed to destroy one of our kayak carts and generally wear ourselves out. This time around we were smart enough to not even get out of our boats. I will say as an aside that this is my second trip in a row to the Saranacs where I never made it into Upper Saranac Lake, which is too bad - there's some beautiful paddling there, especially around Follensby Clear Pond and Fish Creek. Next time ...
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| Impressive beaver dam near Bartlett Carry. Beavers are very industrious |
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| Lunch spot on Middle Saranac Lake |
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| Lunch break |
Upon our return it was interesting to note that no camp craft had been accomplished - for example, no water had been filtered and no wood had been cut. Tall Tom is usually Mr. camp craft, as industrious as any beaver, and his lack of activity around camp was evidence that he was feeling a little under the weather this trip. But he roused himself for some amazing cooking later in the day! It was my turn to make dinner. In planning my dinner recipes for our trips, by my second meal I'm usually doing some backpacker-like recipe, which in this case was a dehydrated vegetarian coconut curry. However once again my appetizer (dehydrated hummus) and dessert (Halloween candy and weird dehydrated cookie dough bites from Walmart) left something to be desired. I was saved in the appetizer department when Tom dug various leftovers from previous nights out of the coolers - three types of cheese, hummus (not the dehydrated kind!) and crackers, etc. But the pièce de résistance was Tom's peach cobbler dessert, built around peach pie filling from Tom's friend Pam. I've never met Pam but based on the volume of her home canning output I picture her as some kind of holdover from 19th Century, perhaps attired in a hoop skirt.
Anyway, the recipe involved spreading the peach pie filling along the bottom of a dutch oven (yes, another of our campsite luxuries this trip was a big cast iron dutch oven), covering it with layer of those instant bake-it-yourself biscuits from a tube, and then letting it bake in the campfire. Hot and bubbly out of the fire it was really good!
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| Peach cobbler dessert |
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| Enjoying our peach cobbler |
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| Post-cobbler chilling by the fire |
By this point, despite our abundance, we were starting to feel the pinch of the end of our trip. We were out of ice, so our coolers were not really keeping things very cold anymore. The gauge on our cooking gas tank was starting to go down. We had burned through a bunch of the firewood. Clearly, the end of the trip was approaching.
Day 7: Friday 9/12
About this time we started to think about cutting the trip a day short. Our plan had been for our usual seven nights of camping, but a variety of factors were leading us to consider trimming a night. I had a music world commitment I wanted to honor on Sunday. Back home, Béla's wife had suffered an injury. In addition there was a chance of rain in the forecast for Saturday, and I suspect Tall Tom was getting frustrated by his lack of ability to do much activity.
Typically eat every single day of the trip I eat a breakfast of grits with various mix-ins: protein powder, powdered milk, peanut powder, and/or trail mix. Our bagel breakfasts on this trip had already offered a break from this monotony. On Friday, our last full day in camp, I dug out the remainder of my granola (something I brought as a snack, not as a meal) and a box of shelf stable milk I had nabbed from the Best Western and had a bowl of granola and milk for breakfast. That may not seem like something worth writing about, but (a) I love breakfast cereal and these camping trips are among the rare occasions when I don't eat at least one bowl of cereal over the course of a day, and (b) I certainly never allow myself the sugary indulgence of granola. It was a treat! Oh, and I even used a disposable bowl so I didn't have any cleanup after breakfast (Béla washes all our dinner dishes in lieu of cooking, but we're each on our own for clean-up for our other meals).
Jen wanted a leisurely day in camp to read and sketch, so Béla and I set out to go back up into Lower Saranac Lake, this time exploring north into the lake itself rather than east into the ponds. I know, another day of "we kayaked, we ate lunch, we kayaked back." But every day has its unique treats, which on Friday included seeing a bear! Béla spotted it first as we were paddling back through the Saranac River. Sure enough, a black bear was watching us from the bank of the river, maybe sixty feet away. While bears are excellent swimmers, the land/water barrier provided at least psychological distance between us. I managed to get a picture before the bear turned and lumbered off into the tall grass. This was very, very cool and was in fact the best bear sighting I've ever had in the wild. I barely even saw bears in Alaska, save for the one I ran across walking the streets of downtown Juneau.
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| Bear! |
We also crossed paths several times with a fisherman in a powerboat whose dog was having a great time standing up in the bow, nose to the wind like a ship's figurehead. Very cute. The cool nights had caused the fall colors to start to pop, and the sun shining through the bright red of the maples would have made our trip back through the Saranac River spectacular even had we not seen the bear!
I must confess that while I love working the Saranac locks, in both directions the lock was in use by a powerboat so Béla and I simply carried our kayaks from one side of the lock to the other rather than waiting.
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| A fisherman's dog enjoying the day |
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| Fall colors popping |
Once we decided we were leaving on Saturday logistics dictated that it would make sense to bring one of the kayaks back on Friday, so I paddled back to South Creek and put my kayak back on my car. The motorboat followed and brought me back to camp.
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| Returning to South Creek |
I feel like every year the writeup of this trip includes an explanation of some arcane aspect of Judaism. This year's topic concerns marking the anniversary of a loved one's death. Every year on the yahrtzeit, or anniversary of a close family member's death you light a candle and say a prayer known as kaddish. The catch is that kaddish is among the prayers which can only be said if there's a quorum of ten people, so the practice in at least Reform synagogues is to say kaddish for the week's yahrtzeits when people gather at Friday night services. This year the anniversary of my mother's passing fell within our trip week. My synagogue live streams services, and with our good connectivity I was able to remotely hear my mother's name mentioned and join in saying the kaddish prayer with the congregation. It was actually quite lovely to do this while watching the sun set over the lake. I did bring a yahrtzeit candle with me on the trip but opted not to light it - the things burn for 24 hours, which I figured might not be safe in camp.
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| Yahrtzeit sunset |
When I returned to the group I found another of Tom's cooking experiments well under way - skillet cornbread. I was still kind of full from Tom's yummy dinner of chicken, vegetables, and rice, but I can't resist cornbread. The bread was a little burned on the bottom, campfire style, but was quite tasty! Another of my luxuries was that I had brought along a few cans of caffeine-free Coke Zero. Given that it was our last night, I drank my final can. I must say that I had felt like a real goober bringing soda on a backcountry camping trip, but it turned out that Tom and Béla brought soda too.
Usually, when I call Valerie in the evening I wander off from camp into the woods to get some privacy, but having seen the bear not all that far from camp earlier in the day, I stayed a little closer to camp than usual. I am the subject of some teasing from the others because I bring a can of bear repellant spray (basically pepper spray in a can the size of a small fire extinguisher) with me on these trips, but I slept better that night knowing I had it nearby.
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| No bears in camp, but apparently a raccoon spent some time in my camp chair |
Day 8: Saturday 9/13
On Saturday we packed up our gear and, as is typical for this group, were ready to go 30 minutes ahead of our planned departure time. Let me say, we brought a lot of stuff! Enough to fill the motorboat pretty well. Thank goodness Jen had packed a bunch of her stuff into her kayak. Tom and I took the motorboat back to the marina. The others paddled back to South Creek where they loaded their kayaks and gear onto their cars and then met us at the marina. It had been Tom's idea to just meet back at the marina, and it worked well. When Jen and Béla arrived we had just finished unloading the gear, which we had stacked into four piles by owner (nonetheless, a few items wound up in the wrong cars).
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| Guiding the gear boat home |
We said our goodbyes with a big hug, then each went our separate ways. It had been really good to spend some time with Jen, who we don't get to see very often since she moved away, and it was good for Tall Tom to get out on a little bit of an adventure.
I got on the road a bit later than the rest due to a pre-drive bathroom break. Well, that and because I made stop at a Stewart's to pick up a vanilla milkshake and a cup of coffee, as I have found that a combination of caffeine and sugar can keep me alert behind the wheel for many hours. Tom was still sharing his location from his phone so it was interesting to track that even though the two cars didn't communicate or coordinate our stops in any way, we remained about 20 minutes apart all the way to Delaware, where I stopped for dinner (a $15 tuna sandwich, which complemented the $7 Diet Coke I had purchased at an earlier gas stop - literal highway robbery) at the Joe Biden rest area before launching into the busy final stretch of roadway through the Baltimore to Washington region.
Lessons Learned
There wasn't too much novel camp craft on this trip. I will say that I bring way too much food. I'm always nervous about running out of food, so I bring a zillion energy bars, bags of snacks, etc. On this trip matters were made worse because I packed for a typical trip, then added extra fresh food because we could. For example, I packed eight breakfasts, then in addition I bought bagels which served for two breakfasts, plus since I had a cooler at the last minute I bought a couple of yogurts which served as breakfast for another couple of days. Likewise, I had packed assuming our traditional high caloric consumption of full days of paddling. Still, I always bring too much food.
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| I had all this food left over at the end of the trip |
Since Rob wasn't part of the trip I did pick up a few items to cover for some of the things he usually brings. His bag of tricks in his bottomless boat includes all kinds of fasteners and lights. I picked up a bag of small spring clips, which served well for hanging stuff on the clothes line as well as holding our picnic table tablecloth in place, and the cool multicolor LED light string which can be seen in the shelter photos. And in preparing for the trip I discovered that it's possible to buy First Aid kit replenishment packs. I'm sure it's cheaper to just grab Tylenol, Immodium, etc. from whatever supply one has at home, but given the damp nature of kayak trips I preferred to have meds in the sealed little single-serving packets you find in first aid kits, since I think they keep better than way.
Another one for the books. Where to next year?!
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