Recent content by paddler123

I have a mostly-restored 1908 17' closed-gunwale Old Town HW (CS grade) for sale - life got in the way of finishing it unfortunately. It has been stripped, some ribs and planks replaced, varnished, canvassed, seats re-caned, and partially painted. Still needs to finish the painting, top and side...

I've done trips up to six weeks, mostly with summer camps, and I don't think I've ever traveled with food that you can't get at a supermarket. Everything cooked on a campfire or in a reflector oven. Typical meals: Breakfast: oatmeal or other hot cereal, often with bacon or spam. Pancakes or...

There is a brief write-up of the river in the AMC Maine River Guide. They have information on the sections from Third Roach Pond to Kokadjo and Kokadjo to Moosehead. It says Class II-III. "You don't have to deal with any dangerous spots here, but you also find no sections of flat water until you...

I think it's worth thinking a little about what we mean by "traditional", since it's all relative in a sense. Most of the "traditional" equipment posted in this thread more or less means "first half twentieth-century". But people have been traveling in canoes for a lot longer than that. When...

Here's my semi-traditional setup. Traditional: Wood/canvas canoe, wooden paddles, wooden wannigans, canvas duffels, leather tumplines, aluminum billy pots, reflector oven. Modern: Eureka Timberline tent, nylon tarp, drybags (inside duffels), modern synthetic clothing/outerwear. in

To (ab)use a metaphor from evolutionary biology, I think most of us use the term "canoe" to refer to the clade of boats descended from the birchbark canoe of northeastern North America. Of course the "evolution" and ancestry of watercraft is a little messier than that of animals, but most boats...

According to Wiktionary, the word "canoe" is a Caribbean word and originally applied to dugout canoes.

Avenza Maps has all of the Canadian topo maps (in a few different versions) for free.

If you're in the right part of the world at the right time of the year, blueberries fresh from the bush!

For the ones you posted, I would guess that they are primarily decorative, even if they originally had a more functional purpose. I've seen them on Grand Lakers as well, which I assumed were to deflect spray at speeds you'll never attain with a paddle.

A pannikin is 1.5-2 cups. Rest assured that any recipe using pannikin as a unit of measure is not super precise, so feel free to approximate.

There are two recipes from past editions of the Keewaydin cookbook at the bottom of this site: https://www.ottertooth.com/keewaydin/K_Misc/cookbook.htm

Not sure I'd call Chestnuts "the Cadillac of the canoes" - maybe closer to a trusty old pickup.

Yes, it's a great route and not very high traffic. It's best done in the spring because the water gets pretty low in the summer. I did it from Fourth Machias Lake to the coast in May of 2014, and have some notes and photos if they would be helpful. I highly recommend the AMC Maine Rivers guide.

Examples (also a plug for the reflector oven!):