Totally Exhaustion

Day 5, Saturday, June 29, 2019

We woke early and left camp at 6:15 long before the other. We’re hoping 45 miles today. That will leave us with less then 20 miles to on Sunday to hit Carmacks which is a big enough town to get groceries and a room for the night.

We’re ready for a shower and a chance to reorganize our stuff. Our food canister is 15 gallons about the size of a wine barrel. Everything falls to the bottom and gets lost. And our 30 gallon dry bag unfurls to be taller than I. We can’t see nor reach the bottom. Apparently what’s ever’s down there is not needed.

The morning was pleasant with few clouds just enough to keep us shaded. Both the river and our paddling seemed fast. And we had the river to ourselves.

About 11:00 we saw a group of paddlers pulling away from shore. They had five canoes and we heard them annoyingly chattering. Annoying because we don’t want to hear anything accept the sounds of the river. We worked hard to dump them, but they we’re paddling just a bit fast then we were. So we pulled off and let them go. We love our solitude.

Th wind picked up in the afternoon as did the heat. We beat into the wind for hours and by the time we stopped at four. We were trashed.

We saw Emma and Johnny, the people from Great Britain, on the shore so we stopped to talk. They were thinking of camp at this spot but decided to head to Carmacks to get some news. They hadn’t heard who their new prime minister was. We did not want to hear the news and spent the night. This was a night after five hard days of paddling that we could have used company. I just couldn’t stop whining about aches and pains and my 3 or 4 million mosquito bites.