Canadian portage

So, the other day Tim, Dana, and I met John Shibley of LSSU down at the St. Marys river for a photo shoot. We paddled towards John, away from him, and parallel to him. Some at casual paddling speed and others at full paddling speed that John was able to capture with slow shutter capabilities. Then, we dunked ourselves to see how long we could stay underwater in the frigid temps. We didn't last very long. After a couple of rolls we called it a shoot. Shortly after Tim wanted to document a brief video about the cause and in his own unique way he created the dialogue and background that made sense and would look good for the project. Hopefully we'll see that soon!

Since it was such a nice day and we were all dressed up for paddling, not to mention that Tim was anxious to get out on the water to test out his dry suit, we decided to paddle the St. Marys from Sherman Park to Rotary Park. Dana headed home to finish end of the semester projects and Tim and I loaded gear and made our way to Sherman Park. I knew it was going to be one of those challenging trips when we got to the park and it was closed. Rather than turn around and submit we knocked on the door of a nearby residence to ask them if we could park in their driveway for a couple of hours until we return from the paddle. The friendly people suggested that we use their second driveway just next door and we were on our way. Once we pulled the kayaks from Tim's vehicle we loaded our gear and carried them about two hundred yards to the beach. From there we geared up and pushed off. Once we paddled away from the beach and into the river we noticed that we had company right behind us. A freighter was approaching so we of course got the heck out of the way and let them pass. We had an astounding 360 degree view of the carrier as it passed by so carefully. It was going so slow that we could have paddled to keep up if we tried hard enough.

We set our sights on a red buoy about half way across the river and paddle to it. Once we got there we tried to make out where the Canadian Locks were. I used to work at the Soo Locks Boat Tours so I remembered going under the train bridge to get to the locks. We made our way to the train bridge and paddled by a few fishermen, "any luck," I yelled. They said, "not yet." As we paddled up to the train bridge a loaded train railed through. We just stopped paddling and took in the sight of being under the train. It's not everyday that you can see a train from underneath. We paddled into the locks not knowing what to expect. We thought someone would come out and tell us what to do or throw a rope over to hold on to or something. We waited....nothing....so we waited some more..... Then someone came walking towards us. We thought for sure that this was the person to instruct us on what to do. "Please don't tell us that we have to get out," I yelled. Turns out the guy didn't work for the the locks, but he did confirm our doubts...."the locks are closed." Ouch! I guess we should have called...haha.

So Tim and I did what we needed to do. We pulled our boats out of the locks via a ladder and portaged to an unused boat landing a few hundred yards away. I must say the Canadian passersby were very friendly and offered a helping hand with getting the boats to the landing, even though we were in their country illegally...ooops. It sure was a great feeling of security to be back in our boats and on the water. We paddled the rest of the way rather quickly from the downriver current and as the sun was to our backs it created beautiful colors in the water as well as the sky. It was a great sense of accomplishment to make it back to Rotary Park in decent time, considering the obstacles we overcame. I thought to myself how amazingly adventurous this summer will be if we had that much excitement in such a short trip down the river....

Sean