Recent content by memaquay

Think back to when you were broke, and you had a 13 foot aluminium bathtub of a canoe, and you would put two other chums and all your camping gear plus 24 beers and go on a trip. The best canoe is the one that gets you to your happy place, all the rest is semantics.

Find an old Clements paddle, the type Bill Mason used. They were made from spruce with oversized shafts to beef up the softwood's strength. I still have one somewhere, it's a unique paddle, not terribly heavy either as it is all softwood.

Clearings like that are not natural occurrences up here, and whenever we find one on a canoe trip, we know that there has been a human presence there. My guess for this area is that it might have been a logging camp that existed sometime before the 1950's. Horse logging was a thing, before the...

We are seeing incidents of winter ticks too. The moose population is declining in Northern Ontario, there is much speculation about the causes. One train of thought blames the expanding deer population and the spread of brain worm that they bring. Apparently white tailed deer can live with...

Moose do and can carry ticks, but they don't carry the tick responsible for lyme disease. Also, when skinning out moose, it's rare to find ticks up here, whereas deer can be covered in them.

Holy God Almighty, the stuff of nightmares!

I'm not convinced it is the cold winters that kill off the ticks. Rather, it is the deep snow and cold winters that keep the deer populations away. We are still in moose country, and deer are very rare, as are ticks. However, overall trends are warming, and deer have been moving into the...

Yes, gas mileage is similar for the 900. When I still owned my old truck, I would frequently skidoo to work in the winter, as my gas mileage was so much better on the sled.

I have an expedition as well, 900 ace, really like that machine. Unfortunately, we have so much snow that our usual avenues for fun have been curtailed. We had a good solid foot of ice on the lakes by the middle of December, then we were hit with a huge dump. Since then, the lakes have been...

Thanks, that's a very gracious answer to an old man rant, lol. Unfortunately I sometimes boil over, usually when someone is lecturing me about plastic straws when the whole dang sh1t house is burning down around us. Anyway, I'm not a leave no trace practitioner, it's impossible to do if you want...

I was schooled to always upgrade the difficulty of a rapid by one category when on a wilderness trip, especially when solo. Aslowhand, you are on a trip worthy of a dedicated masochist, an award I usually reserve for locals, but in your case I will make an exception, and appoint you as the...

I will add a perspective about perspective. Over the last few decades, I have struggled to keep canoe routes from being destroyed in my neck of the woods. If anyone is familiar with modern logging techniques, you will know that a processor, run by an experienced operator, can completely denude...

Gosh, Stripperguy, that first pic of the motorhome looks like gunshots through the window. Is there a story there?

Apparently some of the Garmin watches can act as an In Reach if you buy the plan. There are some on sale for around 400 bucks Canadian (chicken feed in US bucks) that I have been resisting buying. One of the features as well is if you have a major health event, like a heart attack, the watch...

I found the area to be beautiful too, very different from what I was used too. During that five days, I probably saw well over a hundred canoes, just from our campsite. Lots of large groups. Are your plans for next summer bringing you anywhere near G-Town?