An Urban Boychick Takes on the Outdoors

If you've read the first four parts of the Georgian Bay story you should be well prepared for this quiz: 1. Our trip back to Chikanishing featured a) Wind b) More Wind c) Exceptionally Strong wind d) a, b & c Answer key: 1. d Yes, our last day of paddling was once again a windy one. Winds peaking at about 28 MPH, with gusts well into the 30's, coming from due west (so again, right in our faces for most of the trip) and channeled through the narrow inlet to make the wind seem even stronger. The kind of wind where you keep looking at the shore to reassure yourself that you're actually moving forward. The kind of wind where you don't dare miss a paddle stroke for fear of losing what little forward momentum you have. This was small craft advisory bordering on gale force stuff, and on a regular day it's the kind of weather where I'd stay home. No longer hyper-concerned about conserving phone battery power, I was running Strava and so have a track fi...

Day 8 (Thurs) : Readers of this adventure already know that wind is the defining element of paddling on Georgian Bay. The forecast for Thursday through Saturday was unsettling enough to catch the attention of even a non-worrier like me. I thought it might be prudent to return to the put-in early ahead of the weather; however that idea was dead on arrival when presented to the larger group. So, off we went into a few more days of wind and rain. Thursday was our biggest move of the trip, from the southern side of Phillip Edward Island around the east side, up Beaverstone Bay and then around the top of the island into Collins Inlet. I apologize to readers of this blog that there are a confusingly large number of bays to remember. All along we were in Georgian Bay (big), but were paddling through many smaller bays formed by Phillip Edward Island. The best I can suggest is that the curious reader peruse the map. We packed the boats and said goodbye to our sweet "Limerick" camp...

Day 6 (Tues) : So, there's this joke that goes like this: A waiter in a restaurant is checking on his tables. First he goes up to a table of businessmen and asks, "Is everything OK?" Satisfied that they have no issues with their meals, he goes on to his next table, which is occupied by a group of visiting New Yorkers. The waiter approaches them and asks, "Is anything OK?" See, the humor is in the change from "everything" to "anything" - the assumption being that while most diners will find the meal satisfactory, New Yorkers are going to complain about just about everything. What people from flyover country don't grok is that kvetching is just New York small talk, the equivalent of square-staters talking about the weather or tips for baling hay, or whatever it is they talk about. The group had labeled me a "worrier" because I was forever going on about bears. They for some reason got the impression that because I kept saying ...

Day 4 (Sun) : The Canadian Shield is a large area of extremely ancient rock sweeping across much of northern central Canada and into the Adirondacks in the United States. Representing some of the oldest rock formations on earth, the rock of the shield has been worn down by literally billions of years of change and was scrubbed clean of vegetation in successive ice ages. As a result, areas within the Shield have a rugged and ancient felling beauty. The Georgian Bay area has a collection of islands large and small, all made up of exposed craggy pink granite and quartz, topped in some places with pine and birch trees that cling tenaciously to thin soil atop the rocks. The scenery reminds me of Scotland, where they refer to small (too small to be habitable) rocky islands as "skerries". Some big skies on Georgian Bay! Kayaking past a "skerry" Example of Georgian Bay rock formations We knew that wind would be a major factor in this trip. Geor...