Despite a forecast of rain throughout the night and into the next day, we were relieved to wake up to cloudy-but-dry skies. We’d planned on getting up ASAP if that happened, but we were so exhausted from the previous day we decided to press our luck with the weather by an hour.
It played out well. I scouted the portage while Steve packed (long walk through switchbacks on a gravel access road to a not-unreasonable put-in RIGHT below the dam… as in “you can hit it with a rock from here” close) and we managed to get everything packed, moved, loaded, and spray decked before the rain picked up again.
Even with a steady drizzle we weren’t complaining. We were snug and dry under the cockpits of the spray deck and were both outfitted with solid rain jackets and The World’s Best and Most Ridiculous-Looking Rain Hat. The current picked up, as it does below most dams, and the rain never got heavier than a light drizzle. The only unsettling thing was the multitude of deer and small, unidentifiable mammal carcasses hanging in the trees ten feet over our heads; at one point we even passed a fully-assembled tent tangled in a tree. We opted to avoid it completely, afraid of what the contents might be.
The rain lessened as we coasted into Fredericton and it looked like a nice little town, so we pulled over for the morning pilgrimage to Tim Hortons.
The sun came out as we walked into town and the updated weather forecast showed a decreasing chance of rain as the day went on, so we stopped by the Graystone Brewery on the way back to the boat for a quick pint and some people watching. (Overall review: decent beer, but painfully hipster environment. Mom jeans, Cosby sweaters, bad dreds on white kids, overwhelming “lumbersexual” feel, and Blundstones on every other person. We stood out pretty hard.)
With the sun now out in force and a nice breeze at our backs, we shed a few layers and hopped back in the boat bound for Jen and Paul’s suggestion of Oromocto Island. The wind picked up as we paddled the last mile, so our beach landing came in pretty hot.
Oromocto was STUNNING. Cows are grazed there in the summer but hadn’t yet arrived for the season, so it was a mix of wide, flat, grassy expanses and sandbars studded with huge trees. Absolutely pristine, and aside from a flock of unperturbed geese we had it entirely to ourselves. There was a fantastic sunset that we watched from the beach while drinking scotch and fiddling with the camera’s color settings (not that we needed to, with the fabulous show) and then we retired to the tent to pass out on level ground.
…Which we then discovered was DIRECTLY under the flight path to the airport across the river, which apparently has an incoming plane every twenty minutes. Ah well, nothing is perfect.
Whatever. It was really nice to have a quiet(ish) beautiful evening to reflect on how godawful so much of the first third of the trip was. This feels like an entirely different experience; it’s like we’re on an actual vacation and not just punishing ourselves.
