When people ask me, 'how was your vacation?' it is hard to explain, concisely, that it was a wonderful experience, full of fun times, passionate romance and great stories, but that during much of it, I longed to cry, sleep and/or hide in a bush. Oh, and that I saw a moose.
(Mom (upon hearing the news): You are the first person in our family to see a moose.)
I did cry during part of it, actually. (Not the moose part.)
Anyway, so this may take a few posts. It started like this. Exhausted from teaching all summer and moving, CC and I set out on a 12-hour drive to Quebec to canoe-camp. Though we used words like "vacation" and "relax" when we arrived in the enormous La réserve faunique La Vérendrye we selected a 60 km canoe route that would require us to canoe about 20 km per day (that's 10 miles).
CC: 20 km is what experts do, if they are going for a workout.
Me (on second canoe-camping trip, ever.): OK.
You can put your canoe right in the lake at Le Domaine (which rents canoes and serves all other needs you might have, being just about the only town in the reserves 1,000 plus square km). That's easier than driving for an hour, much of it on an unpaved logging road, to put the canoe in a remote lake. Which is what we did, naturally, since neither of us had ever put a canoe on a car before.
(Next time: portage of despair and lake of stimulus.)
3 comments:
I think that what is most important is that you look like you know what you're doing in the "vacation" photos. If you hadn't said anything I would have thought you were an experienced lesbian adventurer tying her very own canoe to her well worn lesbian adventure vehicle (though upon closer inspection you appear to be at a canoe rental place). So, you see, it is easy to fool your reading public into thinking that, with a little flannel and some hiking boots, you and CC were totally geared out for your amazing, totally under control, Quebec adventure.
Also, I'm glad that my Canadian hasn't suggested any of these crazy Canadian activities (skiing in the cold, looking for moose, canoing for 50 gazillon km). While I resemble Disney's Pocahontas, I am not ready for what awaits me in the Canadian wilderness. I'd much rather drink hot cocoa back in the ski lodge, eh.
That's not a canoe rental place, it's a childrens' playground! See, in Canada, there are no slides. So instead, they prop up old canoes (which they have a lot of) and the kids play on those.
The reason they have so many canoes is because everyone in Canada can make a canoe from scratch in fifteen minutes. They learn to do this at an early age because of the bears.
It's all just wrong. Just plain wrong.
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