By Elliot

Distance: 33km

After a good night’s sleep, which I think the Advil I took contributed to, we were off again in the morning.

We managed to make good time today, and reached camp by 3:15pm. It feels like it’s been so long since we ended the day so early. It gave us plenty of time to sit around, read, and nap. Usually we are quite rushed to set up camp, cook, maybe shower and go to bed.

This canoe section has been a lot harder than we imagined. The days are longer and the paddling more strenuous than we thought it would be. It doesn’t help that I have hip pain from the sitting position required in a canoe and Ruth broke out in hives just before we started canoeing and they’ve been getting worse, exacerbated by the sun.

But even with all that, we still find a lot to enjoy in this section, and canoeing is still very satisfying. The first time Ruth and I hung out (chaperoned Ruth’s friends) we biked north of Montreal, rented canoes and went for a short paddle. I liked being reminded of that and the start of our relationship, even if this canoe trip is a lot more arduous than that one was.

A few hours after we arrived at camp today, another couple showed up. By that point, we had figured no one else would be staying here tonight. Had they arrived 20 minutes earlier, they would have found us naked, pouring water over ourselves, in an attempt at showering. They paddled double the distance we did today. They are a pair of elite through hikers, waking early and ending late every day, crushing kilometres. They also seemed uninterested in us, and trying to have a conversation with them was an exhausting. Not everyone you meet on trail can be someone you hit it off with!