Churchill River Saskatchewan canoe trip: August 22, 2011
Day 2, Monday, August 22
Our day started with loons calling out front. A beaver splashed.
Some ducks flew over. Bird tweeting accompanied our breakfast. We
cooked sausage rounds and grilled toast over the campfire,
topping it with freshly picked raspberries. An adult bald eagle
flew overhead.
As we were paddling beside our island,
Barbara spotted a large eagle nest.
We stopped at Bennett Island, trying to
identify some darting small birds who were calling to each other,
likely Philadelphia Vireos.
At the start of MacDonald Channel, Bill caught a small pike. This
Channel is known a fishing hot spot so we spent some time trying
our luck. A small mink swam by and hopped onto land near us. A
large family of mallards seemed right at home.
Bill caught another small pike at our lunch stop at tiny Gus
Island. He threw it back but kept a small walleye he caught
nearby – for our supper.
We approached Robertson Falls where we
saw a spotted sandpiper. We portaged the falls. It was really
hot, and we drank all our water after the effort.
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The 330m Twin Falls portage followed. This had a very steep start followed by a long muddy trail with several large deadfalls to climb over… and zillions of mosquitoes. We later learned we could have used a shorter well developed trail at a nearby lodge, but neither of the books we had read told us about this.
Hot, tired and muddy, we were anxious
to find a campsite. Unfortunately an older sight we were heading
for was overgrown. We were grateful to eventually find a campsite
with a bald eagle perched on a point nearby. 7pm, time to get
unloaded (landing was a steep rocky shoulder so it took awhile to
get everything out), clean the fish and prepare supper… we
enjoyed our walleye dinner and a sunset over the water. As were
still hot, we decided to leave the tarp off – a bad call as
it did start to drizzle in the early morning.
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