Travelling the Highway of the Iroquois...

Bring it on.. summer is here! Wow... hottest day of the summer here, as we hit a high somewhere in the very high 30's with a bunch of Ontario humidity to boot! If you did not have A/C in your car today, you just stayed home!

We decided to head out kayaking today, as per our plan! We decided to try "Life on the Grand" and headed over to Paris to kayak the Grand River down to Brantford.

 

Above was our launching spot...Bean Park. I was just checking out the Maps GPS App on my LG Smart Phone when Judy took this picture. I had forgotten my Magellan Hand Held GPS back at the RV, so relied on our Smart Phone instead. Ya, your right, before all these GPS's we simply would head out and get lost!

We launched from Bean Park in Paris, and the river was nice and wide here, but moving pretty fast... I would estimate around 6 to 8 kph. (4 Mph). We were on the water at 10:15 this morning, so it was not too warm yet, and it was a bit overcast which was good.

 

Judy had her big brimmed hat on from Az. to protect from all the hot sun today...

This turned into a 15 klm. one way trip down the Grand... you cannot paddle up stream on this river, unless you had a 10 h.p. motor on the back of the kayak! We hit a couple patches of white water on the river today to keep things interesting. No problem with our Pelican Kayaks though... very stable.

Things were going very well, until we past a big sign that said, "DANGER, DAM AHEAD". WHAT??? We were not aware of the dam, but they had an easy access to a portage around the dam. We had to land, and then carried the kayaks about 1000 feet or so, to just below the dam and we set back in....

These dams seem to be all over the place around here...

It was about a 3 foot drop at the dam... you could not go down here on your kayak...

Back on the Grand again, we started running into some wildlife, and I am not talking about the kind where people are sitting around drinking! Check out the Heron above... saw a few of these on the river today.

Judy did a great job on the camera today, check out Mamma Turtle and her Baby above... lots of turtles on the river today.

COME ON... here is my favourite picture of the day above... this deer came down to the Grand for a swim and a drink and was also eating the fresh greens along the side of the bank... nature at it's finest!

 

I shot a video of Judy cutting up the Grand with my Smart Phone... only 15 seconds.

Judy caught this Heron just taking off to Tim Horton's to get an afternoon coffee...

After arriving at Brantford, we enjoyed an egg salad sandwich we had brought with us, before I jumped on Judy's Suzuki Burgman, and headed back up to Paris to get our Jeep. We had staged the Burgman here before we set out on the kayaks. The trip down the Grand took 3 hours! It was amazing... we had a blast and want to go back and do it again!

By the time we got back to the RV this afternoon, it was after 3:00 p.m. but that is all right! We are retired!!!

Till tomorrow...

 

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