Day 28: Another leg day

The sun continues! And we continue on into Grand Falls. The river crossed the border and is now fully in Canada; we stopped briefly at the first available Canadian customs station to “officially” cross the border, and they were completely nonplussed by our escapade. Seriously, when we rolled up to the drive-through on foot with the canoe, the Canadian officers were like “cool, okay, have a nice day, eh?”

Canada doesn’t seem NEARLY concerned enough about illegal Americans floating in; this was our only indication of having fully entered a new country.

River speeds slowed as we approached the dam, but the paddling was otherwise delightful. We pulled into the marina above Grand Falls around 4pm, discovered a restaurant/bar at the launch, and decided to have a burger while using their wifi to figure out our next portage/camping situation. The waitress was reasonably sure we could camp at the boat launch with permission from the town offices, but when we called them we realized we’d crossed into a new time zone without realizing it and their office was closed. We ended up calling the local police department, who said that even though it was closed we were welcome to camp at the “Chutes et Gorges” campground… on the other side of town, five miles away.

Dragging this down a US sidewalk always causes absolute mayhem. The residents of Grand Falls were completely nonplussed and all the pedestrians waved hello as if this was something they saw daily.

We got a HUGE break when the bar owner gave us and our portage packs a lift there and back in her car, but we still got to experience the joy of dragging the canoe down the entire main drag of Grand Falls. It was hellish, but worth it; the Falls were RAGING.

I mean, sure, it looks like the water’s a little high, but maybe down below it isn’t THAT bad…

YEAH NOPE IT’S DEFINITELY THAT BAD; you can see that the water level is so high it’s almost over the tops of the dam gates

Oh, and Steve got pulled over with the canoe.

I saw this happening from afar and was laughing so hard by the time I caught up I’d almost peed myself. They mostly wanted to make sure we weren’t putting in directly below the dam- you know, in that pile of whitewater from the previous photo.

The deserted campground was close enough to a Burger King that we ended up having second dinner and a couple of milkshakes before calling it a night. Bonus points for the nearby construction site that had port-o-potties.