I'm off to the North

I'm sitting in Prince Albert, SK's public library, after four? days of paddling on the North Saskatchewan River. I started upstream of Battleford at a rural community called Big Gully. They fed us well, and welcomed us with warm hospitality including live music.

Fort Carlton not only had even better food, they had pagentry galore. Pipers brought us up from the river in a parade, and then seranaded us during dinner. They too had a fiddler, who could catch up to the CD for the Scottish country dancing so well the crowd demanded the music be live only. Native dancing of various sorts rounded out the program. Of course all 100 or more of us voyageurs were in costume to some degree or other. It was rather thrilling! see http://www.youtube.com/user/ThompsonBrigade2008 for some video of us.

the videographer Jay is travelling with us, and will keep adding more photos. My own photos are most disappointing.

You may have noticed that food is important. One day the food was a little thin, and we noticed. We like lots, but then if you're working as hard as we are, food matters. We're paddling about 8-11 hour days, often with a crew change in the middle somewhere. I was worried about how physically prepared I'd be. I'm getting there now.

We're moving out of the parkland part of the prairies into boreal forest. That means, hopefully, less wind but more bugs. The chill has kept the bugs down considerably so far. I'm not eager for a big explosion of them though.

When I arrived, the team was up to 13 paddlers. That meant some creative crew changes. Now we're down to 11, and I think we'll be that for a while now. Interactions can be pretty interesting. We're mostly pretty experienced paddlers, with our own preferences for doing things. While we each try to be accommodating, we also have our bottom lines.

and, the big canoe we're paddling has space limitations. It feels more like packing a kayak!

For the exact route plan see http://2008thompsonbrigade.com/2008DTBpaddlers_schedule08Apr24.pdf
for the best estimate of what's happening. Who knows when I'll be able to post again though.